Which of the following concepts explains the decision to relocate factories in the US from the Midwest and Northeast to locations in the southern US or Mexico?

After the Mayflower

Narrator: Almost nothing is known about the most iconic feast in American history — not even the date. It happened, most likely, in the late summer of 1621 . . . a little less than a year after the Wampanoag saw a small group of strangers land on their shores. Half these strangers — men, women and children — had died of disease, hunger or exposure in their first winter on the unforgiving edge of North America. But by the next summer, with the help of the Wampanoag, the Pilgrims had taken a harvest sure to sustain the settlement through the next barren season. And they meant to celebrate their faith that God had smiled on their endeavor.

Elizabeth Hopkins: Fill up the pot my child and fetch some more water.

Pilgrim Man: Mind your step.

Pilgrim Man #2: More chairs yet?

Elizabeth Hopkins: We should have this done in no time.

Narrator: As the "thanks-giving" began, a group of Wampanoag men led by their Chief, Massasoit, entered the Plymouth settlement . . . not entirely sure of the reception they'd get.

Pilgrim Man: They’re here.

Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Historian: Sometimes the Pilgrims are saying uh back off, and sometimes they bring the Wampanoags closer depending on what circumstances are like. But this is a celebration of their survival, of their recognition that they probably wouldn't have survived without the assistance of these Indians. This is a time clearly when they're welcome.

Elizabeth Hopkins: The governor cannot mean 'em stay.

Narrator: Massasoit and his men had not appeared empty-handed. They brought five fresh-killed deer — providing some of the vitals for a celebration that stretched over the next three days.

Miles Standish: Musketeers make ready! . . . Musketeers, fire!

Crowd: Huzzah! Huzzah!

Narrator: The Wampanoag and the Pilgrims were an unlikely match . . . but the two peoples were bound by what they shared: an urgent need for allies. The Pilgrims were completely alone in a new world, separated by thousands of miles of ocean from friends and family. The Wampanoag — badly weakened by rolling epidemics — lived in fear of rival tribes. That they found one another in 1621 looked like a boon to each.

Neal Salisbury: The Thanksgiving celebration at Plymouth was certainly an unusual event. It's not something we see thereafter. It symbolizes where the relationship stood as of the fall of 1621.

Nanumett: (in Nipmuc) My name is Spotted Crow.

Pilgrim Man: Ankantookoche. . . I'm not so good at your tongue I think. I'm glad you are amused anyway . . .

Waban: (in Nipmuc) I am hungry.

Pilgrim Man: You like it then. Bellycheer. Try some of this…

Pelex: (in Nipmuc) This tastes bad.

Nanumett: (in Nipmuc) No, this tastes good. Yes.

Neal Salisbury, Historian: For the English it establishes that they are going to be able to survive because of the Native Americans.

Winslow: It looks to be some sort of gambling game.

Neal Salisbury, Historian: There are strong personal relationships — certainly going on among the leading political figures on each side and, for all we know, among other individuals as well.

Waban: (in Nipmuc) Winslow, play!

Massasoit: (in Nipmuc) Play!  Play!

Narrator: For those who followed the Pilgrims across the Atlantic, the first "Thanks-giving" would enter into national mythology, where it remains the bright opening chapter of the American creation story. For the Wampanoag, and for Massasoit, the memory of that day would recede into darker places, shadowed by betrayal and loss.

Jill Lepore, Historian: It's as if you could take the storybook version of American History — the myth of the first Thanksgiving — and turn it entirely upside down. Here is this story that's sad, that's sinister and finally is about cruelty and power.

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: Looking back Massasoit would on one level have felt he was true to himself, but on another level he must have regretted what he'd done. He must have thought — what if we had taken a different course of action in dealing with these people?

After The Mayflower

Narrator: They lived in a place of privilege, at the edge of a world, where every new day began. And they called themselves the Wampanoag — the People of the First light.

Rae Gould, Nipmuc Anthropologist: Well, think about it. You're here. You are in the east. You see the sun rise. In relation to your world, to what you know, you are the people of the first light. You are the Wampanoag.

Narrator: Behind the Wampanoag, the sun's west-moving light slowly revealed three-thousand miles of human culture — from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: Indian people shaped this continent. They established civilizations here, societies that had risen and in some cases fallen long before Europeans arrived. As you look across the continent at this time, Shawnees in the Ohio Valley are shaping that area, building their own societies; Cherokees in the southeast, Sioux in the western Great Lakes reaching out in the plains, Apaches on the southern plains and in the south west. Everywhere across North America there are communities and tribes and peoples whose histories are ongoing.

Nanumett: (in Nipmuc) Use this to fix the hole. Tie it well. Yes. Yes, very good.  

Narrator: The confederation of tribes that made up the Wampanoag was one small network section of the native web that spread across North America. The People of the First Light hugged the coast of a vast ocean. To the north were "The People of the Big Hill," the Massachusett. To the west and inland were the NIPMUC, "the People of the Fresh Water." Then the Mohegan and Pequot, and the Narragansett.

Rae Gould, Nipmuc Anthropologist: Just think of this one big circle, and everyone speaking different dialects of Algonquian language, but they were mutually intelligible. So, we're all interrelating with each other, married, trading, sharing resources, using resources.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: It was a community of communities and they had inter-meshed and had their own agendas, their own political problems, their own warfare, and their own trade. There was a rich sort of political interaction in this region.

Tall Oak, Absentee Mashantucket Pequot, Wampanoag: Sometimes everyone gets along and sometimes they don't. But they resolved the conflicts sometimes through military activity and sometimes through negotiations. We had times when we forgave offenses as part of our traditions — with certain ceremonies were held — like the Green Corn Festival, which was held around the harvest time, for the corn. That was a time when you would forgive all the offenses of your-uh different people that you might not have been on good terms with, and you would invite them to the ceremony and they would come and you'd exchange songs and dances. We continue with that because we believe that everything we had was a gift from the Creator.

Narrator: The half-dozen neighboring tribes had achieved a balance of power.  The weaker paying tribute to the stronger. The Wampanoag had sufficient numbers to defend their territory against their nearest rivals, the Narragansett. And the bounty of the land itself eased inter-tribal tensions.

Awashunk: (in Nipmuc) Children! Children! Come!

Narrator: The shallows of the ocean and the bays gave up heaps of shellfish; inland rivers watered the growing fields, where the Wampanoag cultivated corn, beans, squash...The woodlands were filled with game for food and furs to get them through the cold, dark of winter. In 1615, the land sustained tens of thousands of people.

Neal Salisbury, Historian: The explorers who describe these regions all describe the native peoples of New England living in these very populous villages. In fact Champlain, sailing for the French, decided that they didn't want to colonize New England because there were too many people here.

Narrator: For a hundred years alien ships had trolled off the Wampanoag coast...apparitions on the horizon. Odd-looking European explorers and fishermen occasionally came ashore, but they made scant effort to establish relations.

Waban: (in Nipmuc) Some strangers are coming.

Pelex: (in Nipmuc) Maybe they will pass by.

Waban: (in Nipmuc) Maybe, but I don't think so.

Narrator: The visitors were known to kill native people, or to capture and carry away men and women, but in the century since Columbus, the Europeans had yet to leave any real footprint on the Wampanoag shores.

Neal Salisbury, Historian: In the years 1617 to 19, an epidemic swept through New England. We don't know exactly what disease this was. And some of the reports of symptoms seem to suggest different diseases. It's possible that one followed rapidly upon the other.

Karen Kupperman, Historian: A normal epidemic hits a few people and then other people get sick but the first people start getting better. In this case everyone gets sick at once. 

Neal Salisbury, Historian: A sickness was usually interpreted as an invasion of hostile spiritual powers. And the native people had medicine men, whom they called "powwows," who were experts at countering the spirits of the diseases with which native people had experienced. In this case the powwows were ineffective. Often they were victims themselves.

Lisa Brooks, Abenaki Historian: The way that native people refer to it is that the world turned upside down.

Jill Lepore, Historian: A whole village might have two survivors, and those two survivors were not just like any two people. They were two people who had seen everyone they know die miserable, wretched, painful — excruciatingly painful — deaths.

Massasoit: (in Nipmuc) Great Spirit, please accept these humble offerings.

Jill Lepore, Historian: So, it's not only that the population was eviscerated, it's that the survivors were deeply affected by their experiences, and vulnerable in ways that are hard for us to imagine, this sort of post-Apocalyptic vulnerability. 

Narrator: Massasoit had seen nine of every ten of his people perish of a cause nobody understood: tiny microbes for which the native population had no natural defense — alien diseases left behind by European sailors. As the season of death subsided, the Narragansett — largely spared the ravages of the epidemic — began a series of raids on Wampanoag villages. And the beleaguered Wampanoag looked to Massasoit to lead them into an uncertain future.

Edward Winslow: Miles, I think there's a channel further starboard.

Miles Standish: I spy it.

Edward Winslow: Not much further now lads.

Miles Standish: Haul away. Put your backs into it. Pull! Pull, lads, pull!

Narrator: In December of 1620, after 66 days at sea and five uneasy weeks on the northern tip of Cape Cod, a scraggly cult from England anchored its sailing vessel — the Mayflower — off the mainland coast and sent a small party of men to scout the wooded shores.

Miles Standish: Ship oars.

Pilgram Man: Shore the oars.

Miles Standish: Prepare to set sail.

Pilgrim Man: Let’s tie it off here.

Pilgrim Man #2: Let’s tie it off. 

Narrator: Radical religious views had made the Pilgrims unwelcome and unwanted in England; they had no home to go back to if they failed to make one in this new world.

Soon after coming ashore, the scout party stumbled onto the Wampanoag village of Patuxet.

Edward Winslow: Miles. It's a village.

Jonathan Perry, Aquinnah Wampanoag: Prior to the 1600s, Patuxet was a large community of it's estimated well over 2,000 native people. In 1618, the sickness reduces the population to almost zero.

Edward Winslow: Some kind of jewelry.

Jonathan Perry, Aquinnah Wampanoag: When the English arrive they find houses fallen to ruin, fields lying fallow, human bones bleaching in the sun that have been scattered by animals.

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: They attributed this devastation to God looking out and clearing the way for his chosen people.

Edward Winslow: I think we've found a home.

Pilgrim Man: We’ll need more wood. Pile it up over here…

Narrator: Patuxet had easy access to fresh water, a decent harbor, and high ground from which the Pilgrims could defend themselves. They set their lone cannon on a nearby hill and christened the village New Plymouth. The fortifications were hardly sufficient to the task; the Wampanoag, even in their weakened state, could have wiped out the visitors with ease; instead Massasoit sent warriors to keep an eye on the strangers.

Tall Oak, Absentee Mashantucket Pequot, Wampanoag: The Pilgrims reported themselves in their journals that they saw Indians. And of course when they didn't see them, they thought they saw them because any time a bush would move they were sure there was an Indian behind it. Our people always had to watch. It was part of our survival. You had to watch anyone, to observe how they were and to see how they were going to act.

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: When Indian people see the strangers who have arrived and they've brought with them women and children, that makes them different from previous Europeans that they've seen or heard of.

Jessie Little Doe, Mashpee Wampanoag Linguist: In Wampanoag tradition, if you're thinking about making trouble, you don't bring your women and you don't bring your children. So to see folks showing up with women and children, immediately they're not a threat. Secondly, they're really, really sickly...and they're starving.

William Brewster: To you who are troubled, rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flame and fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power…

Narrator: The longer the Wampanoag watched, the more pitiful the strangers appeared. One hundred and two Pilgrims had made the trip across the Atlantic. Midway through that winter, fifteen had died of disease or deprivation. By the end of the winter, the Pilgrims had buried forty-five of their fellow travelers. Thirteen of the eighteen women had died. But even as their numbers dwindled, it was clear the strangers were not giving up...and anxiety grew among the Wampanoag. While many powerful tribal leaders — or sachems — argued that it was time to finish off the Pilgrims before their settlement took hold, Massasoit counseled patience. The final decision on handling the strangers would fall to him.

Sachem of the Pokanokets — one of the groups that made up the Wampanoag confederacy — he had risen to the leadership of all the Wampanoag, earning his title: Massasoit.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: Massasoit is a classic sort of-of village chief or super village chief in the Algonquian world. He is a man of great respect among his people. He doesn't have the coercive power that a European sovereign or a monarch would have. He is a person who leads by example, and people have faith in his leadership and his experience.

Narrator: Throughout that winter, Massasoit wrestled with the question of how to deal with the newcomers. The Chief's first impulse had been to put a curse on the Pilgrims, and watch them die off altogether. But the weakened Wampanoag needed any friends they could get. Massasoit was paying steep tribute to the Narragansett, but he knew his near neighbors had the numbers to overrun the remaining Wampanoag villages whenever they chose. And he was aware that the strangers came from a nation of wealth and military might.

Karen Kupperman, Historian: During the winter of 1620-21, Massasoit must have been thinking about the possibilities of some kind of alliance because the Pilgrims look pretty manageable, given the fact that 50% of them are dead by the end of the first winter. Massasoit — and this is an assumption that was made by Indians all up and down the coast — would have thought, this will be good. I can have these people here. I can get from them the things that I want from Europeans and I can control them. So they'll be an ally and a benefit to me and my people.

Massasoit: (in Nipmuc) Oh Grandfather Sun, I am thankful for this beautiful day.  Let me choose wisely my actions for the well being of my People.

Act Two

Pilgrim Man: This country ain’t fit for man or beast!  That’s ready now.

Pilgrim Man #2: We need more water over here.

Pilgrim Man: Steady Boys…

Narrator: In the first days of spring, 1621, Massasoit sent a small party into the Pilgrim settlement.

Pilgrim Man: Alright, stay back everyone.

Edward Winslow: Please.

Narrator: The Wampanoag chief and sixty of his men waited on the far side of a small river; he refused to enter the village himself until the Pilgrims agreed to give up a hostage.

Pilgrim Man: Don’t worry. We’ll be right here. 

Narrator: The English chose a young man with little to lose. Edward Winslow was a 25-year-old whose wife was just days from death.

Pilgrim Man: You’re all right, Lad.

Narrator: Winslow agreed to go as the hostage...and to deliver Governor John Carver's invitation to Massasoit to enter Plymouth for talks.

Edward Winslow: I come from King James who welcomes you with love and peace. The King sees you, my lord, as his friend and ally. Please enter our village.  Mr. Carver — the governor — would like to speak with you. Please we wish to be at peace with you, as our closest neighbors. Please.

Narrator: Among the men with Massasoit that day was a Wampanoag who could act as translator.

Squanto: Nippe. Nippe.

Narrator: Tisquantum, or Squanto, had been kidnapped years earlier and sold into slavery in Europe. When he made his way back home Squanto could speak a little English, and was familiar with European custom.

Tisquantum: My king welcomes you here.

Massasoit: (in Nipmuc) We see that you have great difficulty here.

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: This is one of the very first of these treaty encounters that are going to become such an important part of Anglo-American relations with Indian peoples across the continent.

John Carver: We want to be at peace with you. We want you to promise none of your people will harm any of our people.

Massasoit: (in Nipmuc) Tell him we mean no harm.

John Carver: Let us agree then that if any one unjustly attack you, that we will help you, and if any unjustly attack us, then you will help us.

Narrator: There was cause for joy on both sides: the Pilgrims had friends to help them navigate the unfamiliar hardships of their new home; the Wampanoag had made themselves the first and favored ally of the new English colony.

Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Historian: There's a very clear sense that Massasoit understands the entire treaty as reciprocal. At the very end of the treaty it says if you do these things then King James will esteem you his friend and ally. So it would make very good sense for the Indians to think this is an alliance, this is a meeting between friends. As soon as the treaty is concluded, that very day, Massasoit says, "Tomorrow I'll bring my people and we'll plant corn on the other side of the stream." So this sense that we're the same people now. We're going to be sharing everything.

Narrator: Over the coming months, the two peoples made halting moves toward codifying their alliance. As a show of friendship, Massasoit formally ceded the settlers the village of Patuxet, and all the planting land and hunting grounds around it. In July Edward Winslow made a forty-mile journey to Massasoit's village, Pokanoket, and presented the chief a gift of a copper chain. The Wampanoag agreed to trade with the English alone, and not the French. Massasoit would benefit as the facilitator of trade between the English and other tribes. A few weeks after Winslow's visit, the Pilgrims invited the Wampanoag to take part in their first American thanks-giving. But what sealed the relationship was a simple show of personal respect.

In February of 1623, when a messenger arrived at Plymouth with the news that Massasoit was desperately ill, Winslow — like many Algonquian — rushed to his side.

Voices: (in Nipmuc) Heal him!

Karen Kupperman, Historian: Winslow makes the point that this is what Indians do. When a friend is sick everyone congregates at the friend's bedside. This is one of those places where Winslow is acting as he knows Indians expect people to act.

Edward Winslow: Massasoit…

Massasoit: (in Nipmuc) Is that you Winslow?

Edward Winslow: (in Nipmuc) Yes, Massasoit.  

Massasoit: (in Nipmuc) Until we meet again my friend.

Karen Kupperman, Historian: Edward Winslow is a very interesting man. He was the second in command in Plymouth and he's the one who takes it upon himself to become the principle emissary to Massasoit.

Edward Winslow: (in Nipmuc) Eat, Massasoit.

Karen Kupperman, Historian: Some Indians had a dual chieftain system. That is they had a overall chief who is called the "inside chief," who is responsible for the community and basically stays within the community. And then there's an "outside chief" who is responsible for essentially foreign relations and war. Winslow is acting as the outside chief.

Edward Winslow: Please, heavenly Father, watch over your child Massasoit...

Narrator: Winslow's medicine was of no particular benefit to Massasoit, but the chief did recover and Winslow was there — representing the entire Plymouth Colony — when Massasoit was able to rise again.

Massasoit: (in Nipmuc) I will never forget your kindness.

Narrator: In spite of a growing trust between Edward Winslow and Massasoit, the relationship between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag remained tentative. The Pilgrims were separatists...devout Christians who had fled the Old World for fear its corruptions would darken the Godly light in which they dwelled. Corrupting influences lurked...everywhere.

Awashunk: (in Nipmuc) See. This is what they should look like.

Elizabeth Hopkins: She cannot mean to eat this.

Narrator: Even Winslow, who found the Wampanoag and other tribes "trustworthy," "quick of apprehension," and "just", fretted about close contact with Indians.

Jill Lepore, Historian: You see at the beginning of the 17th century, this kind of cautious getting to know one another. As those peoples become more and more dependent on one another, and exchange more and more goods, and ideas, and people — children, wives, families — have more and more contact with one another. In a sense, the two peoples come to share a great deal. They come, the English come to be more like Indians in many ways. They dress more like Indians. They use Indian words. They're familiar with Indian ways. And the Indians come to be more like English. A lot of Indians speak English. They wear English clothes.  They build houses that are English. There's a reciprocity of exchange that actually turns out — we might think, 'oh how lovely. What a nice multicultural fest that is.’ But actually it makes everyone very, very nervous.

Narrator: The Pilgrims were especially wary; they were badly outnumbered and many Indians, they believed, bore the English "an inveterate malice." They also knew Massasoit hadn't the power to shield them from every danger.

So in the spring of 1623, after hearing rumors of a planned attack by Massachusett Indians to the North, the Pilgrims — under their militia leader Miles Standish — made a deadly pre-emptive raid...and returned to Plymouth with an object lesson to those who would cross them.

Miles Standish: Gentlemen, here is a proper trophy. 

Pilgrim Rowers: HUZZAHS!

Narrator: "This sudden and unexpected execution has so terrified the Indians," Edward Winslow wrote, "that many have fled their homes. Living like this, on the run, many have fallen sick, and died."

Shocking and brutal as the raid was, Massasoit counseled his sachems to keep up relations with Plymouth. The Wampanoag were still the favored friends of the English. And the English were surely no threat to their friends.

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: Massasoit is able to keep this peace for a long time, which suggests that it's not simply his personality and his command that's doing that. The nature of native society means that he is representing what the majority of his people want to do.

Karen Kupperman, Historian: The Indians wanted certain things from the Europeans: knives, axes, swords and steel drills.

Jean O’Brien, Ojibwe Historian: Europeans bring things like metal kettles that are very useful for Indian people and Indian people incorporate those goods into their own cultures on their own terms and in their own ways.

Lisa Brooks, Abenaki Historian: For native people, trade is about binding people together in relationships of reciprocity. So that was the question. How do we bring the English into these relationships of reciprocity? 

Tall Oak, Absentee Mashantucket Pequot, Wampanoag: We lived right near the shoreline, and we harvested the quahogs, which you make quahog chowder from and all the other good things. And then after you eat the contents, then you saved the shell. We wasted nothing that the Creator gave 'cause everything was a gift, and from the shell from the quahog, the purple spire is what we made the wampum beads from.

All the tribes respected the wampum — and the value that wampum had was spiritual, more so than material. We used it in ceremony, it sealed agreements, it was what notarized a transaction. When wampum was exchanged, no one would break the agreement that went along with the wampum — be it a marriage agreement or a treaty or whatever, because it was so sacred, and you don't go against the creator.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: Initially the Europeans then will say, "Well, this must be like silver or gold. This is something that Indian people will use and trade back and forth." So they accepted it initially as well and wampum is seen as Native American currency by the English.

Narrator: European traders — long familiar with a money economy — set in motion a system for exchanging hard goods for wampum, making the Indian's traditional ceremonial amulet the coin of the American realm. Trade flourished under this ingenious new system. English merchants eagerly awaited Indian furs from the New World; the beaver hat was the fashionable new accessory on the streets of London. And the arrival at Plymouth of product-laden ships from England was happy news to all. With the import of steel drills, native tribes could greatly speed the manufacture of wampum.

Karen Kupperman, Historian: It's much easier to create a wampum shell, to drill that hole through the center with a steel drill than with a stone drill, and so suddenly there's a large supply of wampum. And what this means is that tribes in the interior who previously had very little access to wampum now are able to get it and they're also groups that have furs and other things to trade to the Europeans.

Daniel K. Richter, Historian: Plymouth colonists rely on Massasoit to begin brokering connections with other Native groups. So Massasoit becomes this very important node in these regional exchanges among furs and European goods and wampum all of which are being exchanged many times in different groups depending on who has what.

Narrator: With the Pilgrims integrated into the web of his alliances, Massasoit's gamble — welcoming the strangers — seemed to have paid handsome dividends.

Daniel K. Richter, Historian: I think he would have looked back over the previous decade and thought that he had done some pretty good work. It must have seemed possible to Wampanoags and to other Native groups and southern New England to envision a future in which English and Native communities could live profitably together.

Narrator: In the spring of 1630, a fleet of ships led by the Arabella appeared off the coast to the north of Plymouth — carrying a thousand new immigrants. While the Pilgrims had been escaping Europe, these Puritans meant to re-create a new and more pious England in America. They had embarked from England with a grant from their King to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony...and with a boundless sense of mission.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: In Europe at this time, and particularly among the Christian kingdoms of Europe, there was this belief in the right to go out and usurp land that was not occupied by Christian people. And this was a religious basis for this, as well as political, in that this was a God-ordained practice in which one would be spreading Christianity and would be spreading European civilization, and there was a moral obligation to do so.

Narrator: On board the Arabella, days before it landed, the future Governor of the new Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, essayed the epic vision: "The Lord shall make us a praise and glory, for we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us." The Puritans washed into Massachusetts Bay by the thousands in the next five years, establishing town after town...their path cleared by new waves of small pox hitting tribes in New England.

Tall Oak, Absentee Mashantucket Pequot, Wampanoag: One of the historians of the Puritans — I'm quite sure it was one of the clergymen — said, in reference to the death of so many of the Massachusetts people, that the land was almost cleared of 'those pernicious creatures so as to make way for a better growth.' Now he's talking about women, children, all of that, but that's the way they related because their unfounded notion of European superiority.

They kept coming, one boatload after another.

Lisa Brooks, Abenaki Historian: You have all of these people who are coming over from England with that sense of entitlement. They have this image of the colonies as if there's just great space for them to occupy and there are great resources that are for the taking.

Narrator: In less than a generation, Massasoit saw the English population surrounding the Wampanoag rise from 300 to 20,000.

Awashunk: (in Nipmuc) English beasts! Go away!

Karen Kupperman, Historian: The animals that the English bring with them are incredibly devastating because they let them run loose. The pigs in particular had apparently no natural enemies here. They would talk about, you know, enumerable numbers of pigs just vacuuming up the acorns and the other things on which Native people relied for food and on which these animals that the Native people were accustomed to hunt relied for food.

Daniel K. Richter, Historian: The population of the English colonies was growing dramatically, with an increasing demand to establish new towns, create farms and expand. The one thing that Native People have that the English people want is their land.

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: Access to an acquisition of this so-called "free land" that the Americas offer is a source of constant and recurrent conflict with Indian people. The English came from a society where land was in short supply. Ownership of land was a mark of status as well as a source of wealth. For Indian people, land is homeland. You are rooted to it by generations of living on the land, your identity is tied up in it. It's not a commodity to be bought and sold.

Narrator: Massasoit had not felt pressured to sell land for the first twenty years of Plymouth's existence and his first commitments to cede territory had seemed harmless. But just as the English became more aggressively acquisitive, Massasoit found himself in a weak bargaining position.

The beaver population was badly depleted, collapsing the trade on which his relationship with the Pilgrims had been built.  And the English no longer needed Massasoit's help in expanding their commercial reach. So he was forced to bend to his allies' desire to have his land.

The chief got what he could for the Wampanoag land. He sold one parcel for ten fathom of beads and a coat. As time went on he asked for more:  hatchets, hoes, knives, iron kettles, moose skins, matchlock muskets, yards of cotton and pounds of English coin.

Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Historian: There are several incidents where Massasoit's clearly disgruntled with the way things are changing. For instance he agrees to sell some of his land to some of the settlers down in Rhode Island. And they pay him for it and he says, "This is this is nowhere near enough." And he gives it back. And they refuse to take it. They refuse to take the gifts, the payment back. And they say, you know, "You can't return this and this is a done deal. This, this land is now ours."

Narrator: The English were in a race to establish empire in the Americas...jockeying for territory with the French, the Spanish, the Swedish, the Dutch.

Karen Kupperman, Historian: They're very expansive and they don't expand incrementally. They're aware that the Connecticut River is a major conduit of trade. The Dutch are already on the lower end of the river and so clearly they want to control the Connecticut River from its midsection.

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: With the influx of English people in the 1630s Puritan New England ceases to be weak and vulnerable and now becomes a power in the region. As they look further west, they see another major power. The English identify the Pequot as an obstacle to their expansion.

Narrator: In the spring of 1637, Massasoit received word that a force led by Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies had destroyed the Pequot — the most powerful Indian confederacy in the area. In the final battle, English soldiers — to the horror of their Indian allies — had burned an undefended village, killing hundreds.

Jean O’Brien, Ojibwe Historian: The Pequot war established in Indian minds the potential savagery of the English. The idea of 700 people — men, women, and children — perishing in the burning of a fort was incomprehensible to Indians. It was a cautionary tale that Massasoit did not forget.

Massasoit: (in Nipmuc) Keep them dry.

Pelex: (in Nipmuc) Hand me more.

Narrator: Soon after the destruction of the Pequot, Massasoit traveled to Massachusetts Bay Colony to deliver to its governor, John Winthrop, a gift of sixteen beaver skins, and to re-state his long-standing friendship with the colonists...all in hopes they would continue to honor the promise of shared security the English had made in that first long-ago treaty.

Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Historian: Massasoit hopes that this tribute is going to solidify his friendship with Massachusetts because he's worried and he's not the only one. Winthrop writes in his journal that after the Pequot war dozens of Indian groups in the area come to Massachusetts to the court and try to make friends. Say you know, we, we want to be your, your friends, your partners, your subjects, whatever it takes. They're, they're frightened.

Narrator: Massasoit's eventual heir — his second son — was born around the time of the Pequot War, and nearly twenty years after the arrival of the Pilgrims.  He knew no world but the one in which English and Wampanoag lived together.  Even his names would suggest a man comfortable in two cultures.

Narrator: He was first called Metacom, and later Philip.  He came of age in the 1650s...in a world his forefathers could not have imagined. He fancied fine English lacework, and richly detailed wampum. He was one of the few Wampanoag who kept pigs. And he counted among his close friends both Indians and Englishmen.

Daniel K. Richter, Historian: He was described by an English traveler as walking through the streets of Boston decked out in massive amounts of wampum showing his wealth and his power, comfortable walking in this world that had been created together by the English and the Native People of the region. 

Narrator: As he approached manhood Philip was more and more aware of his father's growing unease. Massasoit's tribal borders had receded in around Narragansett Bay. Disease continued to thin the Wampanoag. His trusted ally, Edward Winslow, had died. The new leadership in Plymouth had little memory of the time they had needed Massasoit's help.

Jill Lepore, Historian: When do the English lose their sense of openness? Well when they become more independent. When they realize that they no longer need the Indians. And right around that same time, in the 1650s, they make one attempt to convert the Indians to Christianity. Which is to say, in effect, "Well if you're gonna live among us, you need to basically become us, because we can't live with people who are different from ourselves."

Narrator: In 1651, Puritan minister John Eliot established a "praying town" in Natick, Massachusetts. In Natick, as in the dozen praying towns that followed, Indians who converted to Christianity were assured physical security and the promise of eternal life...so long as they agreed to live by moral codes drawn up by Puritan clergy.

Tall Oak, Absentee Mashantucket Pequot, Wampanoag: The praying Indian towns were set up by the English to basically control Indians. You had all these rules that were alien in concept, and native people had to do everything in the English way; and everything Indian, of course, all the traditions that were sacred to your fathers and your father's father since time immemorial, you had to reject all of that in favor of following the English way. So you had to look down on your own people, essentially is what it boiled down to.

Jessie Little Doe, Mashpee Wampanoag Linguist: Wampanoag people here got the idea that somehow if we are to survive at all, we've got to at least say that we're assimilated; we've got to say that we're Christian. Whatever that means, or we're going to be wiped out completely.

Jean O’Brien, Ojibwe Historian: In order to be accepted as a full member of the church you needed relate a conversion experience that was witnessed by the congregation and that was deemed sufficient that you've been saved. That you believe yourself to be saved. We have this remarkable set of documents that were published at the time called “Tears of Repentance,” that were Indians from Natick relating their conversion experiences, and they were witnessed by a panel of ministers. 

Praying Indian #1: I heard that Word, that it is a shame for a man to wear long hair, and that there was no such custom in the Churches; at first I thought I loved not long hair, but I did, and found it very hard to cut it off; and then I prayed to God to pardon that sin also

 Praying Indian #2: When they said the devil was my God, I was angry, because I was proud...I loved to pray to many Gods.. Then going to your house, I more desired to hear of God...then I was angry with myself and loathed myself and thought God will not forgive my sins.

Praying Indian #3: I see God is still angry with me for all my sins and He hath afflicted me by the death of three of my children, and I fear God is still angry, because great are my sins, and I fear lest my children be not gone to Heaven.

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: The English missionaries demanded from Indian people much more than an expressed belief in their God. It was part of an English cultural assault, which Massasoit must have seen was tearing apart many native communities, and I think that's why he wants to try and curb the missionaries, try and stop this kind of assault taking place.

Narrator: As Massasoit's days drew down, he made a point of stipulating in land deeds that Christian missionaries stay out of what remained of Wampanoag territory.

Having watched the English erode his tribe's landholdings and his father's authority, Philip determined to make a marriage of power. He wed a woman who was a leader in her own right . . . the daughter of a chief who had opposed Massasoit's alliance with the English from the beginning.

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: Massasoit must have wondered what kind of world he was handing on to his sons, to his children. I think there's a certain resignation in some of his actions toward the end of his life — an attempt to stem the tide of English assault on Indian land, on Indian culture, on Indian sovereignty, and a lingering hope that maybe things will still work out okay. Maybe there can still be peace, because I think that was his vision of what New England would be, was a vision of peace. 

Narrator: Massasoit died in the early 1660s, forty years after his first alliance with the Pilgrims. His passing came just as a new hard-edged generation of English leaders was rising to power. Men like Josiah Winslow, Edward's son, who was intent on hastening the final reckoning between the Wampanoag and the English. Philip — just 24 years old — took his father's place as the Wampanoag chief.

Jonathan Perry, Aquinnah Wampanoag: And suddenly it's all on him. He was leading in a very difficult and very dangerous time, where essentially every part of our society, was being stripped away.

Daniel K. Richter, Historian: The wampum trade was declining. The fur trade was declining. The demand for the English to acquire more and more Algonquian land was increasing. More and more Native People, for whatever reason, were choosing to move to praying towns. The world that had created Philip was collapsing around him.

Narrator: Philip hoped to strike a delicate balance: maintaining his alliances among the English while also maintaining what remained of Wampanoag sovereignty. He continued to abide by the terms of his father's treaty. But like his father, he rejected repeated efforts by Puritan missionaries to convert him. "If I became a praying sachem, I shall be a poor and weak one," he said, "and easily trod upon by others." He also declared a moratorium on land sales. English authorities had little interest in humoring the young Wampanoag chief.

Jean O’Brien, Ojibwe Historian: There were a variety of ways that English claimed possessions of Indian lands: everything from just seizing them and then attending to the legalities much later, merely occupying lands that they want to declare vacant and thus, available for the taking. One that is often overlooked is that the English would get Indians indebted. As Indians continued to experience ill health and epidemic disease, one of the things that they become indebted for is health-care that’s being provided by English guardians. These English guardians used this as a way to get their hands on Indian land. So that once the debts have been accumulated they go to the Indian estate for the land for payment. And this becomes a massive mechanism of Indian dispossession.

Jessie Little Doe, Mashpee Wampanoag Linguist: What people felt for millennia,'This is my land, and my land is me, and I am it,' obviously because we come from it, and we eat from it…and things die, they go into the land, and we eat from what grows from there. So when we say land it's just "ahh-key" — land.  But if you say 'my land,' you have to say "na-tahh-keem". This means that 'I am physically the land, and the land is physically me.' And after Europeans were here for about seventy years, people started, you started to write “na-tahh-key”, which is so sad, because that means I am not necessarily part of the land anymore. 'It can…my land can be separated from my person.'

R. David Edmunds, Historian: There is a continual erosion of tribal people's ability to maintain control over their own lives. And I think by the 1660s, Philip finds himself up against the wall. In other words, unless one makes a stand, the-the Wampanoag or the tribal people are going to be completely overrun.

Narrator: In 1671, rumors spread that Philip was growing angry...and preparing to act. Authorities in Plymouth — Josiah Winslow chief among them — summoned Philip to account for himself.

Jill Lepore, Historian: Josiah Winslow has no curiosity whatsoever about these people with whom he's grown up. He's known them all his life. He considers them an obstacle. He considers them untrustworthy. He wants nothing more than to find a means of provoking a war that could lead to their extermination. 

Josiah Winslow: You have, have you not, in recent times, procured a great and unusual supply of both ammunition and provisions, planning an attack on us both here in Taunton and in other places.

Philip: These charges against me are false.

Josiah Winslow: If you have no such designs, have your men hand over their weapons.

Tall Oak, Absentee Mashantucket Pequot, Wampanoag: He had two choices. Either give all the weapons up or acknowledge to the English that he was preparing for war, as they were accusing him of. So he had to choose the lesser of the two evils.

Philip: (in Nipmuc) We have no choice at this time. Give up your guns.

Tavoser: (in Nipmuc) No, we have done no wrong.

Narrator: Before taking his leave, Philip was made to sign a confession in which he admitted disloyalty to the English, and promised to turn over any weapons the Wampanoag had amassed.

Daniel K. Richter, Historian: This is a real turning point for Philip in that it's quite clear that the aims of the English are not just to gain more and more land, not just to undercut native people economically and spiritually, but clearly to make native people their subjects.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: They no longer are being treated as equals; they're no longer being treated as allies; they're being treated essentially as second-class citizens in their own country. 

Narrator: Philip was not eager to make a fight with the English; a war would shred his father's historic alliance. And put his entire tribe in peril. There were only a thousand Wampanoag remaining, and nearly half were living in the Praying Towns. Philip had few warriors. But the Wampanoag chief did prepare — seeking allies among nearby tribes, and quietly buying up firearms. At home in Mount Hope, with his English friends nearby, Philip wrestled with the enormity of a war against Josiah Winslow and Plymouth colony.   

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: He was clearly a person caught in historical forces that gave him very difficult choices, and like many Indian leaders in those situations across the continent, he must have been weighing the options of peace and war, he must have been trying to balance conflicting pressures.

Narrator: Betrayal forced Philip's hand. In January 1675, Philip's personal secretary traveled to Plymouth to warn Governor Winslow that Philip was arming for war. Three weeks later, the secretary was dead.  English authorities arrested three of Philip's men, tried them for the murder, and executed them.

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: For Indian people, of course, a killing of an Indian by an Indian in Indian country was something that should have been settled by Indian people. After that blatant assault of Indian sovereignty, Philip must have been under incredible pressure from his warriors to step up and do something about this.

Narrator: As whispers of a coming war spread among the English colonists that following summer, the deputy governor of Rhode Island invited Philip to a meeting to offer some friendly advice.

Easton: KOONEPEAM, Philip. We thank you for coming over to speak with us. Our business is to try to prevent you from doing wrong. 

Tavoser: (in Nipmuc)We have done no wrong.

Nookau: (in Nipmuc)We have been first to do good to the English. They have never been good to us. 

Philip: We have done no wrong.

Easton: If you start a war against the English, much blood will be spilt. A war will bring in all Englishmen for we're all under one king. I urge you to lay down your arms Philip because the English are too strong for you.

Philip: Then the English should treat us as we treated the English when we were too strong for the English.

Narrator: Philip's angry young warriors refused to heed Easton's warning that war with Plymouth would bring every colony in New England down on their heads. Days after the conference with Easton, Philip sent warning from Mount Hope to an old English friend in nearby Swansea: it might be best to leave the area.When Wampanoag warriors began their rampage, Philip stood with them, convincing other aggrieved tribes in the area — including the Wampanoag's old rival, the Narragansett — to join their fight against New England: a fight the English would come to call King Philip's War.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: This war that breaks out in New England is a major war. It has a big impact on the societies in New England, both Native American and white. By the winter of 1676 or so, to get outside of Boston for Europeans was a very dangerous prospect.

Daniel K. Richter, Historian: Native American forces had devastating victories over the English in the early months of that war, destroyed large numbers of towns and people and property, and were very much winning that war and putting the English on a defensive.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: The war spread to Connecticut. The war spread into Rhode Island. The war spread into eastern New York. Tribe after tribe after tribe became involved in this.

Narrator: English colonists from the outlying villages fled to bigger towns; some simply boarded ships and headed back to Europe. Alarmists among the English feared they would all be driven into the sea.

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: The English look now very differently at Indian people, even those Indian people who have lived among them, even those Indian people who have committed to living a Christian life and are living in the praying towns. These Indians now come to be regarded as, at the very least, a potential fifth column — as people who cannot be trusted, as people who are liable to turn on you at any time.

Narrator: As winter approached, the colonists banished hundreds of Christian Indians living in praying towns...men, women and children. 

Tall Oak, Absentee Mashantucket Pequot, Wampanoag: They took them on a forced march to the Charles River, put them in canoes, and put them on Deer Island in the middle of Boston Harbor, which at that time of year is a cold, blustery place. Over three or four hundred perished from lack of food and exposure, because they gave them no blankets or food, or anything, and just dumped them there.

Narrator: The war ground on — month after month — exacting a terrible price. Twenty-five English towns were destroyed; more than two thousand English colonists died. But the shared danger did unite the colonies...and they lashed back. In early 1676 Philip could feel the tide turning; and then the powerful Mohawks — longtime allies of the English — made a surprise attack, killing almost 500 of Philip's men and dooming his confederacy.A year into the war, scores of Indian villages had been burned to ash. Five thousand native people had died; hundreds of men, women and children who did survive — "heathen malefactors" Josiah Winslow called them — were loaded onto boats, shipped to the West Indies and Europe, and sold into slavery. Native tribes in southern New England had been crushed, and would never again control their destiny in their homeland.

Narrator: In the summer of 1676, Philip retreated home to Mount Hope with his wife and children; his cause all but lost.

Philip: (in Nipmuc) O Grandfather Sun, I am thankful for this beautiful day. Let me choose my actions wisely for the well being of my People.

Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Historian: It does seem a little unusual that he would come back to Mount Hope, because there are so many troops around there looking for him. It's like consciously walking into a trap.

Jill Lepore, Historian: When he returns to Mount Hope, he certainly has given up, he's going there to die. Rather than a grand, heroic military figure, he's a more poignant, sad figure, a person filled with sorrow at the end of his life.

Narrator: On August 12, 1676, an English militia unit — along with a Praying Indian named John Alderman — surprised Philip and his dwindling band of followers.

Jonathan Perry, Aquinnah Wampanoag: After Philip was shot by Alderman, they dismembered his body. The scarred right hand of Philip was given to Alderman as a trophy of the war. His parts were strewn about the colonies, spread to the four corners.

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: This is a warning to other people, to other Indian people. This is what the English will…this is how the Enlish will deal with rebellion, deal with treason. And remember that in English eyes Philip was a traitor — and this was the punishment meted out by 17th century Englishman to traitors.

Narrator: Massasoit's son was dead and scattered, but the colonists were taking no chances; they captured Philip's son and heir — a nine-year-old boy — and locked him in a jail in Plymouth. While English authorities deliberated on whether to sell the boy into slavery, or simply murder him, the Puritans gave thanks to their God.

Jill Lepore, Historian: And the final day of thanksgiving, of the war, is the day Philip's head is marched into Plymouth. This decapitated head on a pole, its erected in the center, in the center of town and is cause for a great celebration.

Narrator: They wouldn't take it down, Philip's head. For two decades — while Philip's son lived in slavery in the West Indies — the head was displayed in Plymouth, a reminder to the Indians about who was in charge; a reminder to the English that God continued to smile on their endeavor.

Colin G. Calloway, Historian: It's hard to see how conflict could have been avoided and how the outcome of that war could have been different. Looking at the generation before this war, there is at least a moment, where things were different.

Tecumseh

Narrator: No pictures were ever made of him during his lifetime. No account in his own words was left behind. Looking back the movement he led would seem to some to have been doomed to failure from the start. And yet in the course of his breathtakingly brief and meteoric career, he would rise to become one of the greatest Native American leaders of all time — and one of the most gifted, far-sighted, revered and inspiring — forging, from the glowing embers of his younger brother’s soaring vision, an extraordinary coalition — and orchestrating the most ambitious pan-Indian resistance movement ever mounted on the North American continent — determined to defend the Native American homelands and ways of life.

Kevin Williams, Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma: I mean, to be Shawnee, and to have Tecumseh be a member of that tribe is to be honored — to be honored to be in that tribe. He and his brother were trying to get the Shawnee people back to their roots and try to keep their lands from being taken. And he was a visionary. And I think today — what would have happened if he had succeeded in his plan? It would have changed history.        

Andrew Warrior, Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma: He had a vision to make sure that the Indian way of life was going to continue...at whatever cost. This is a man — an Indian man, a self-proclaimed leader, a self-proclaimed chief — who stood up and said, “Hey, this is enough. I don’t want no more of this. You’ve taken enough.” And he took a stand.

Stephen Warren, Historian: One way one might think of Tecumseh is as a man who led a revolution of young men — young men who were tired of the accommodationist stance of their elders — young men who thought that the leadership structure of the Shawnee tribe needed to be reordered and reimagined, in order for the Shawnees and all native people to survive. 

R. David Edmunds, Historian: What Tecumseh is fighting for is the ability of Indian people east of the Mississippi to hold onto their homelands. Their lands are under siege in the period after the American Revolution. The white frontier is moving into the Ohio Valley — it’s also moving onto the Gulf Plains in the South. And Tecumseh says, “This has got to stop. We have to stand and all realize that we’re in this together.” I think Tecumseh’s one of those people that, if he were alive today and would walk into a room, people would stop talking and just stare at him.  Tribal people back in the first part of the 19th century would say, “Tecumseh is a man of very, very strong medicine.” There was this aura around him of leadership and respect, that even people who opposed him — even his enemies — admired him.His genius was in inspiring people. And he was a very inspirational man that was able to bring out the very best in those people who supported him. And to see beyond any particular tribal affiliation, and to realize that this was a struggle that was of greater magnitude. I also think that there was a spiritual component to this — that he believed that he was appointed by the powers in the universe...to really bring people together, and to make this stand. And to retain what was left of the Indian homeland. This was his life. This was what he had been born to do.

Tecumseh: These lands are ours. No one has a right to remove us. The Master of Life knows no boundaries, nor will his red people acknowledge any. The Master of Life has appointed this place for us to light our fires, and here we shall remain.         

George Blanchard, Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma: Well, I’ve always heard “Teh-cum-theh”— “Teh-cum-theh” — means, in our culture and our belief, at nights when we see a falling star, it means that this panther is jumping from one mountain to another. And as kids, when we saw these falling stars, we’d kind of hesitate about being out in the dark, because we thought there were actually panthers out there walking around...So that's what his name meant: Teh-cum-theh.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: Ohio was a very special place for the Shawnees. The Shawnees called Ohio, and the Ohio Valley, the “center of the world.” It was an area where Shawnee villages dotted the river valleys. It was an area where one could come down from Ohio, cross the Ohio River and hunt into the bluegrass region of Kentucky — where at this time there were small herds of buffalo, there were elk, there were deer there. So it was a very special place, and it was a place which was very dear to Shawnee hearts. The word Shawnee means “Southerner,” and they were called “southerners” by other Algonquin-speaking people. Shawnees had lived in the Ohio Valley off and on for a great period of time. They had scattered in the early 1700s — but they’d come back into Ohio, and they hunted extensively into Kentucky.

Colin Calloway, Historian: Tecumseh was born around 1768. That’s the same year that a huge treaty at Fort Stanwix in New York essentially opens up what is now Kentucky to English settlement. Much of that territory is Shawnee hunting territory. So right at the time of Tecumseh’s birth, it’s clear that issues of land — and English or American access to this land — are going to be vital factors in shaping his life.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: Tecumseh and his younger brother grew up in the midst of the American Revolution. And it was an exciting time, I’m sure, for a young Shawnee man to come to manhood — but it was also a time of danger, and a time of a certain amount of turmoil. It was a time when Shawnee warriors went south across the river to strike at the frontier forts in Kentucky, and it was a time when the Shawnee villages north of the Ohio were attacked periodically by expeditions of Kentuckians into the region.

Narrator: Named for the Kispokothe war clan into which he was born — whose spiritual patron was a celestial panther leaping across the heavens — he showed promise from the start — quick to learn, graceful and athletic, and touched with a striking natural charisma. “There was a certain something in his countenance and manner,” a childhood friend recalled, “that always commanded respect, and made those about him love him.” The contrasts could not have been more striking with his troubled younger brother, Lalawethika.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: Lalawethika was seven years younger than Tecumseh and grew up in his brother’s shadow. He was very unsuccessful as a little child. His nickname was Lalawethika — which means the “noise maker,” I think translated idiomatically it probably meant “loudmouth,” a person that makes a lot of noise. As a child of about ten or twelve years old he shoots his own eye out while fooling around with a bow and arrow...and just is not a very happy young child.

Narrator: In the end, no Shawnee family would be left untouched by the rising tide of violence in the Ohio River Valley.

Stephen Warren, Historian: Tecumseh and Lalawethika lost their father when Tecumseh was seven. Their mother left for Missouri in 1779 after horrifying warfare between the Long Knives and the Shawnees. So that by the time Lalawethika was thirteen, roughly half of their immediate family members had either been killed or had voluntarily removed from Ohio.  

Narrator: For the Shawnees as a whole, the outcome of the American Revolution would prove even more cataclysmic.All through the war they had fought valiantly on the British side in defense of their homelands, without losing a battle — only to discover — following the British surrender — that their one time allies had ceded all lands west of the Appalachians to the new American republic.

Colin Calloway, Historian: At the Peace of Paris in 1783, no Indians are there. The terms of the treaty do not even mention Indian people — and, yet, this is a treaty that has huge...significance for Indians. Britain...transfers to the new United States all territory that it has claimed south of the Great Lakes — east of the Mississippi — north of Florida. That is Indian country. For the United States, it’s a crucial resource. Land is the basis of the new nation, land is the opportunity to create what Jefferson comes to call an “empire of liberty.” But you have to get that land from Indian people. And within a few years, Indian people begin to recoil from that, and to recognize the degree to which the United States represents a major threat to their existence. Indian nations begin to unite in a confederation, to resist that expansion.

Narrator: In the alliance of tribes that now rose up to stop the white invasion, the Shawnees would take the lead, and Tecumseh himself first make a name for himself on the field of battle — in what would prove to be the beginning of an epic thirty-year long struggle, that would permanently shape the physical and moral geography of the new nation.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: The area they called the Old Northwest — the area north of the Ohio River — was sort of up for grabs in the period after the American Revolution. The British still had forts at Detroit, and they still had a lot of influence among the tribes because they were operating out of Canada. [And] the British are not even sure whether the new United States is going to stand. And they feel that if the United States goes under, they want to be able to move back into this region in force. And so the British keep telling the Indians, “Oh, well, you should stand up against the United States, and we will supply you with guns and ammunition...”

Narrator: For six long years, the Shawnees and their allies kept U.S. forces on the run — all but destroying the American army in 1792 — only to be stopped two years later at the battle of Fallen Timbers in northern Ohio — where a well-planned retreat to the safety of a nearby British fort was turned into a disaster for the Indian Confederacy — and a bitter lesson in British reliability that Tecumseh would never forget.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: Tecumseh fights in the battle, and eventually has to withdraw, with part of his warriors, towards the British fort. The tribal people assume that the British are going to let them into the fort, and that there’ll be another stand made there — but the British refuse them entrance.

Colin Calloway, Historian: The British slam the gates of the fort in their faces — fearful of a renewed war with the United States...To the Indians — to Tecumseh — this is another act of British betrayal.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: Well, Fallen Timbers is a disaster for tribal people. And it is following this battle that the tribes are forced to sign the Treaty of Greenville — giving up about the southeastern two-thirds of Ohio. Tecumseh refuses to sign the treaty. He even refuses to participate in the proceedings. Tecumseh is incensed that they are now forced to give up much of his former homeland. But this is the death knell, in many ways, for the tribes in the Old Northwest.

Donald L. Fixico, Historian: The natural world that the Shawnees knew...was changing. The eastern tribes are being pushed farther into their lands. There are observations of deer being less — bear being less, the receding of wild game. And so Tecumseh knows he has to construct some type of plan. And it has to be a large plan, in order to confront this huge westward expansion that begins to pulsate into different areas — into the Great Lakes area — and into the southeast part of the United States. But how do you stop this huge westward expansion?

Narrator: The Treaty of Greenville marked a crucial turning point in the battle for the eastern half of the continent — opening the Ohio River Valley to a flood of white settlers — hemming the Shawnees and their allies onto dwindling tracts of land too small to sustain the old ways of life. Even in the newly created Territory of Indiana — into which Tecumseh and his followers now retreated, hoping to find refuge — a systematic policy of land loss and dispossession was soon put into place by American politicians — eager to effect the transfer of land any way they could — and convinced the Indian way of life was dying. “The American settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians,” President Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1801, “who will in time either incorporate with us as citizens of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi. Some tribes are advancing, and on these English seductions will have no effect.  But the backward will yield, and be thrown further back into barbarism and misery...and we shall be obliged to drive them with the beasts of the forest into the stony mountains.”

Stephen Warren, Historian: I don’t think we appreciate just how ruthless Thomas Jefferson was as President in 1801 — and how ruthless folks like Jefferson’s territorial governor, William Henry Harrison were in the period specifically after 1800. The Americans employed what was called the “factory system.” And what that was the establishment of government forts throughout the old Northwest where the government would accept furs in exchange for goods.  And it became a way of making native people into debtors of the United States. And when Thomas Jefferson becomes President, in his first term he writes William Henry Harrison and says, you know, essentially: “Through the factory system, native people will incur debts beyond what they are willing to pay. And they will only be able to pay those back through a cession of lands.”

John Sugden, Biographer:  So for the Shawnees — for Tecumseh — it was a period of continual dispossession — continual violence — and continual retreat. There is no place at that time you could really — if you were a Shawnee — have called home. Because it was constantly being taken off you.

Stephen Warren, Historian: So that by 1805, native people find themselves confined to a small corridor of land — really a spit of land — in northwestern Ohio and northeastern Indiana.  That’s all that’s left of them. And it is not enough to continue a hunting tradition. What was happening to them was a tragedy of epic proportions. Men could no longer hunt; they could no longer operate as life-sustaining killers; they could not feed their families via hunting; they were on a constant war footing. And... another horrifying aspect of it is that so many men have tried to protect their people through war, and have died doing it, that these villages are totally out of balance. So that there are probably double the number of women as men in any native village in 1805, because of this war of attrition. And so these are not only broken homes, but broken communities. 

R. David Edmunds, Historian: It is a time in which disease flourishes and spreads across many of the tribes of the Ohio Valley. It is a time when alcoholism begins to spread among the tribe.   The very fabric of tribal society — the kinship systems — seem to be under stress. And it’s a time when, I think, a lot of Shawnees are having second thoughts about: “Who are we, and what is going on here? Why has the Master of Life turned his face from us? What has happened to us? What have we done to cause this?”

Narrator: By the spring of 1805, the misery and suffering in northern Indiana had reachedthe breaking point. In Tecumseh’s village along the White River, even so great a provider as he was helpless to defend his people from the rain of woe now descending upon them; while almost day by day, his younger brother, Lalawethika — a failed hunter and warrior, who had tried without success to support his family as a holy man and healer — sank further and further into an abyss of shame and despair.

Stephen Warren, Historian: I think that Lalawethika fell victim to all of the worst unintended consequences of colonialism: you know he was an alcoholic; and many viewed him as lazy; prone to violence; he abused his wife. And so every opportunity that Lalawethika had to distinguish himself resulted in failure. And, by most accounts, he could not support his family.  So that he was dependent upon Tecumseh, and others like him, to literally feed his family. He was so caught up in the sadness and the despair of dependency upon the United State in the form of alcohol; and the fur trade; of land loss. It was so destructive, and such a sad time.  

Narrator: It would be all the more surprising then in the dark spring of 1805 — as the universe continued to come unhinged for the Shawnees — that a message of terrifying beauty and hope would be brought to the beleaguered people — coming in their very darkest hour, and in the end, from the least likely of sources.

Stephen Warren, Historian: In 1805, his family recalls an event in which Lalawethika falls into a fire, he just — he collapses. And everyone in his immediate family, his immediate vicinity, believes that he’s dead...But he miraculously comes back to life. He wakes up to report a vision of extraordinary breadth and power.    

Lalawethika: I died, and was carried in a dream by the Master of Life down into the spirit world...until we came to a parting of the ways. To the right lay the road to paradise open only to the virtuous few...To the left, I saw an army of forsaken souls stumbling on towards three dark houses — fearful dwellings of punishment and pain...I saw unrepentant drunkards forced to swallow molten lead. And when they drank it their bowels were seized with an exquisite burning. At the last house their torment was inexpressible. I heard them scream, crying pitifully — roaring like the falls of a great river.

Colin Calloway, Historian: When Lalawethika recovers from his vision, he says that he has come with a message. And the message is, I think, a message of revitalization — of restoration — for a people who’ve lost their way, in the way that he had lost his way. He is a reformed individual.  He takes a new name for himself — Tenskwatawa, the “Open Door.” And the message that he brings — that Indian people can make themselves whole again — by rejecting the worst influences that white people have brought to them — hits a powerful chord. It gives people who may have lost hope a new hope. It gives them a direction. It gives them an opportunity to remake themselves — to restore themselves — by reviving their Indian culture and identity.

John Sugden, Biographer: Well, the impact is he reforms instantly...He suddenly doesn’t drink anymore...And he is preaching to others now that, “If you want to save yourselves...You have to have a personal revolution in your way of life.”      

Tenskwatawa: My Children! The Great Spirit bids me say to you thus. You must not dress like the Whites...You must not get drunk. It displeases the Great Spirit...

Stephen Warren, Historian: It’s a world without alcohol — it’s a world without spousal abuse — you know, it’s a world without skin-hunting, in which men only kill in order to feed themselves and their families. And he formulated a message that appealed to a great many Shawnee, Delaware, Wyandotte, Kickapoo, Pottawatomie — because that was their experience at the time. You know, this is a world totally out of balance. And so his vision is a vision for all native people, in a broad way. It’s intended for everyone. And as a recovered alcoholic, you know, he could speak to people who had not had that conversion experience — who were still caught up in that cycle of despair.

John Sugden, Biographer: He took the name Tenskwatawa — the “open door” — which was a way of suggesting that you could reach grace through him — he was a doorway to salvation.

Narrator: Friends and family members were astonished by the changes that had transformedLalawethika almost overnight — and none more so than Tecumseh himself — who all through the fall and winter of 1805, looked on thoughtfully as young men from across the Midwest  trooped into their village along the White River in increasing number — drawn by his brother’s siren call of renewal — and by his brother himself — who would soon be known simply as the Prophet.

Tenskwatawa: Now My Children, I charge you not to speak of this talk to the whites...The world is not as it was at first, but it is broken, and leans down; and those that are on the slope, from the Chippewas, and further, will all die, if the earth should fall; therefore, if they would live, every Indian village must send to me two persons to be instructed, so as to prevent it.

Stephen Warren, Historian: I think Tecumseh understands that there are a whole bunch of wounded warriors out there — and by “wounded,” I mean people who are psychologically wounded, people who are culturally wounded. And I think he sees Tenskwatawa’s vision as a means of inspiring them to act — to pick up their feet, you know, and to join him. So he parlays Tenskwatawa’s vision into that kind of pan-Indian organizational scheme.         

John Sugden, Biographer: And very quickly, you see as early as 1806 you see a political plan coming into it. Tecumseh is saying, “We can use this movement to reunify this broken people, the Shawnees.” Which was a long-desired dream of Shawnee leaders — to bring this scattered tribe together, and make them of consequence again.

Narrator:  In the spring of 1806, the two brothers took their first decisive step. Eager to establish a center for the new movement — and to re-assert the Shawnee claim to homelands already ceded by treaty — they moved their village to a new site in western Ohio — on the American side of the line established by the Treaty of Greenville ten years earlier, in open defiance of the American government — then sent out messengers to villages across the region, often led by Tecumseh himself.

Tecumseh: The Shawnees have heretofore been scattered about in parties, which we have found has been attended with bad consequences. We are now going to collect them all together to one town that one chief may keep them in good order, and prevent sickness, despair and disorder from coming among them.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: Initially, Tecumseh remains in the Prophet’s shadow. We know that he’s aware of his brother’s transformation; we know that the brother lives in, quote, “Tecumseh’s village.” But it is the Prophet that first attracts the tribal people to the village.

Narrator: From the start, the new movement sent shock waves surging through Indian country — unsettling native communities already rocked by decades of change — and deeply dividing the Shawnees themselves — along with other worn down tribes, like the Delawares and the Wyandots.

John Sugden, Biographer: The Shawnee chiefs in Ohio saw a power struggle in it straight away.  They saw, “This is a man, from a junior division of the Shawnees, bidding for power — and we’re damn well not gonna give it to him.”

Colin Calloway, Historian: And even within Tecumseh's own nation, there are Shawnees who are now trying to follow the white man’s path — who are following the lead of Black Hoof, who was a person who had fought against the Americans through the Revolution, up until the Treaty of Greenville — but now, as an older man, is saying: “We fought. We’ve tried that way — it's not working — we need to try this way.”

Narrator: In April 1806 — eager to win more recruits from among the troubled tribes in Ohio and Indiana — Tenskwatawa issued a direct challenge to any leaders who opposed him — accusing them of witchcraft, and of being in league with the U.S. government.

Stephen Warren, Historian: He essentially engaged in a series of high-profile confrontations with their leadersto the point where he enters into a Wyandotte village and engages in a ritualized killing of a Wyandotte leader. He essentially accused him, and others like him, of being a witch — of attempting to undermine them, by acting as a kind of wedge for Americans to enter their communities and harm their people. And so people begin to see him as an iconoclast of sorts, who’s willing to take on government chiefs; who are in the pay of the United States. And his message spreads like wildfire as a result.

Narrator: In late April — as a wave of fear and unease rippled through white communities in southern Indiana — the territorial governor, William Henry Harrison, fired off a letter to the Delawares — denouncing the Shawnee Prophet as an impostor — and urging them to put his supposed powers to the test.

Harrison: My children. Who is this pretended prophet who dares to speak in the name of the great Creator? Examine him. If he is really a prophet, ask him to cause the sun to stand still, or the moon to alter its courses, the river to cease to flow or the dead to rise from their graves. If he does these things you may believe that he is sent from God. Otherwise drive him from your town and let peace and harmony prevail amongst you.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: And in June 1806 the Shawnee Prophet predicts an eclipse of the sun — called a “Black Sun” by the Shawnees — which is a sign of great things to come — a sign of great change. And, at first, many Shawnees — many other Indians — said, “Oh, this time I don’t really think he’s able to do it.”

Tenskwatawa: Did I not speak the truth? See now, the sun is dark!

R. David Edmunds, Historian: And the eclipse was so complete that the farm animals, for example, went into the sheds; the birds roosted; etcetera. And the Prophet’s stock after this just rose like a skyrocket. William Henry Harrison could not have done anything that helps the Prophet, and propels the Prophet and Tecumseh to a position of prominence, more than issuing this challenge.

Narrator: As news of the miracle spread, the trickle of pilgrims coming into Greenville swelled to a flood. By July, Ojibwa villages on the shores of Lake Superior stood empty and deserted. To the south, Potawatomis left corn crops standing in the fields, and came to hear the Shawnee holy man — whose words now, with each passing month, seemed to grow in stridency and power.

Tenskwatawa: My Children! The Great Spirit bids me say to you thus. Have very little to do with the Americans...They are unjust; they have taken away your lands which were not made for them. The Whites I have placed on the other side of the Great Water, to be another people, separate from you... [in time] I will overturn the land, so that all the white people will be covered and you alone shall inhabit the land.

Stephen Warren, Historian: And the U.S. government panics...And the fear really proliferates.   Because by 1807 certainly, I think most Americans just assumed an orderly process of dispossession and conquest, in which Native Americans would gradually recede from the picture, or assimilate into American society. And when Tenskwatawa has his vision, all of a sudden ten years of confidence erodes, as native people reconsider and attempt to reorganize themselves in an effective way against Jefferson’s vision of land loss and dispossession.

Narrator: Now events began to accelerate. In the spring of 1807, the Indian agent at Fort Wayne, William Wells — alarmed by the upturn in Indians passing through his outpost — accused the Prophet of keeping settlers “in a continual state of uneaseness,” he said, and demanded he leave Greenville. That June — convinced that English agents operating out of Canada were egging the Indians on to war — William Henry Harrison fired off a letter to the Secretary of War. “I really fear,” he wrote, “that this said Prophet is an engine set to work by the British for some bad purpose.” In the fall of 1808, as the war of words grew louder — the two brothers decided to move their center of operations to a new site, a hundred and fifty miles west — strategically located near the junction of the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers, deep in Indiana Territory — far away from prying white eyes they hoped — and closer to the western tribes that had been most receptive to the Prophet’s message to begin with. The new village, called Prophetstown, would soon rise to become one of the greatest centers of Indian resistance on the North American continent. It would also become a major obstacle to the dreams of statehood nurtured by William Henry Harrison — who in 1809 redoubled his efforts to drive the Indians from Indiana — bribing local chiefs into signing away lands over which they had no authority — and pressing one land cession after another through the Territorial Legislature — culminating in the notorious Treaty of Fort Wayne in the autumn of 1809.

John Sugden, Biographer: The Treaty of Fort Wayne really changes everything, and the politics comes to the fore...Here’s three million acres of Indian land suddenly snatched away, and white settlements are moving closer than ever before to Prophetstown. And suddenly there is a need for very urgent political action.

Narrator: For Tecumseh, it was the decisive moment. Convinced now that only the most radical and concerted efforts could save the Indian land base, he stepped out from behind his brother’s shadow once and for all and sprang into action. In the months and years to come — rallying warriors from half a continent to his cause — he would do everything he could to push back and redraw the still fluid boundaries of the new United States — and to create of a permanent Indian homeland in the very heartland of the country — bounded by the Ohio River to the south and east — by the Great Lakes to the north — and by the Mississippi River to the West — a United Indian States of America within the United States.

Colin Calloway, Historian: Tecumseh’s vision is to establish, I think, what I would call cultural and physical space for Indian people. He understands that for Indian culture to survive and for Indian independence to survive there needs to be a land base, and that land base can only be preserved and protected by a united tribal resistance. This is no longer a fight that can be waged by just some Shawnees — just some Delawares, just some Wyandottes. He’s appealing to a larger, pan-Indian future, in which the future of all Indian peoples will be affected by the stand that Indian peoples take now.

Tecumseh: They have driven us from the sea to the lakes, and we can go no farther. They have taken upon themselves to say this tract of land belongs to the Miamis, this to the Delawares and so on...Our father tells us that we have no business on the Wabash — that the land belongs to other tribes...But the Great Spirit intended it to be the common property of all the tribes, nor can it be sold without the consent of all...

Narrator: In 1809, Tecumseh set out with an entourage of warriors and interpreters on the first of a series of epic tours — east to the Shawnees and Wyandots in Ohio — west to the Sacs & Foxes and Winnabagoes in Illinois — south to the Creeks and Choctaws in Alabama and Georgia — and north, as far as way as Canada, to the home of the Senecas, the Iroquois — and the British — determined to swell the ranks of the burgeoning Indian confederacy any way he could — and to find supplies and reinforcements for the armed conflict he now knew was inevitable.

John Sugden, Biographer: He doesn’t pluck this confederacy out of nowhere...He just tries to revive the confederacy he had known as a young man. He even uses the same terminology — the idea that the land is held in common by the Indians. No one tribe can cede it without the permission of the others...And, therefore, it’s in all our interests to defend it.Now this was a job — [that was] much more difficult than the job of the American founding fathers — who at least had some tradition of common origin and a similar language and similar thought patterns and mind sets. On top of those problems, though, Tecumseh was facing the fact that these weren’t states, they were fragmented villages. So you couldn’t just convince a few chiefs and hope that was going to do the business for you...Those chiefs might have almost no or little authority within their own communities. But this lack of authority in Indian communities both played against him and for him, because...even if the chiefs were in opposition, he could pull the warriors from underneath them by appealing to them. And this is really one of his strategies.

Tecumseh: Listen, people. The past speaks for itself. “Where today are the Pequots? Where the Narragansetts, the Powatans, Pocanokets, and many other once powerful tribes of our race? Look abroad over their once beautiful country and what do you see now? Nothing but the ravages of the pale-face destroyers. So it will be with you Creek, Chickasaws and Choctaws. The annihilation of our race is at hand unless we unite in one common cause against the common foe.

Donald L. Fixico, Historian:  I mean, so many different groups come to this call for warriors. When you think about twenty different tribes — many in which the languages are so different and the politics are so different. He’s dissolved tribal barriers, tribal differences, cultural differences, as well — and he’s got them to believe in one mind. For one person to get so many people to come of the same mind — yes, indeed, it’s propaganda — yes indeed, it’s campaigning — yes indeed, it’s diplomacy — being an ambassador, a military strategist. And so, in my mind, he’s succeeded with this idea.

Narrator:By 1810,the impact of Tecumseh’s diplomacy could be felt up and down the Wabash. By May, nearly a thousand people had streamed into Prophetstown, and all spring and summer the numbers continued to build. Fearing imminent bloodshed, William Henry Harrison called for a contingent of federal troops to reinforce the territorial capital at Vincennes — then sent a messenger to Prophetstown itself — urging the Prophet to come to Vincennes to air grievances about the Treaty of Fort Wayne. But it was Tecumseh himself who replied — telling the messenger that he personally would come to meet with Harrison — to discuss Indian outrage over the newly ceded lands.On August 12th, 1810, a party of seventy-five warriors with Tecumseh in command arrived at Harrison’s headquarters at Vincennes for the historic confrontation.

John Sugden, Biographer: There were some canonical stories about Tecumseh, which, even if you knew nothing else you could say, “This is someone you have to reckon with.” One of them is that confrontation with Harrison in 1810...that magnificent, really, confrontation...where he knew a conflict was coming, and so did Harrison. And here you have two representatives of entirely different philosophies and points of view...And neither individual was afraid of the other. Harrison had no need to be; the resources were all behind him. But Tecumseh — there was no sense that being in a weak position should mitigate, or reduce his point of view or the worthiness of his cause. 

Tecumseh: How my Brother can you blame me for placing little confidence in the promises of our fathers the Americans? You have endeavored to make distinctions. You have taken tribes aside. You wish to prevent the Indians from uniting, and from considering their land the common property of the whole. I do not see how we can remain at peace with you if you continue to do so. Brother. This land that was sold, and the goods that were given for it, were done only by the few. If you continue to purchase land from those who have no right to sell it, I do not know what will be the consequence. I now wish you to listen to me, Brother. I tell you so because I am authorized by all the tribes to do so. I am at the head of them all. I am a Warrior, and all the Warriors will meet together in two or three moons from this. Then I will call for those chiefs that sold you the land and shall know what to do with them. For Brother, we want to save this land; we do not wish you to take it. And if you take it you shall be the cause of trouble between us.

Harrison: The United States has not treated the Indians dishonestly nor unjustly. Indians are not one nation, nor do they own the land in common. Has not the Great Spirit given them separate tongues?

Tecumseh: How dare you! 

Harrison: This council is over.

John Sugden, Biographer: He stood up in a very remarkable and frank way and more or less admitted to Harrison that war would come. I think he said at one point: “You are pushing us into a conflict. We have no alternative. This is going to happen if you continue with this policy.”  And, of course, Harrison certainly was going to continue that policy. But both men gave no ground.

Narrator: For nearly a week the talks continued — Tecumseh insisting the lands be returned; Harrison, insisting they had been fairly acquired, refusing to return them. Before the deadlocked meetings adjourned, Harrison promised to pass Tecumseh’s demands on to the president in Washington — adding, however, that he very much doubted the request would be granted. No one present ever forgot Tecumseh’s reply.

Tecumseh: As the Great Chief in Washington is to determine the matter, I hope the Great Spirit will put some sense into his head to induce him to direct you to give up this land. It is true, he is so far off. He will not be injured by the war. He may still sit in his town, and drink his wine, whilst you and I will have to fight it out.

Harrison: 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.

John Sugden, Biographer: Now, Tecumseh did a remarkable thing. He said a remarkable thing in 1810, when he confronted Harrison at Vincennes. He said something I don’t think any Native American had before, and I don’t think many had said afterwards. He stood up, defended Indian land, and said he represented every Indian on the continent. Now, what a preposterous assertion, even for someone whose life had been so far-flung as his. But to make such a claim at that time — it was an absolutely preposterous thing to say. Yet what he was saying was that he understood that Native American peoples were in a particular historical predicament, and he was articulating that predicament — and he was doing it for all of them.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: Well, I think by 1811 Tecumseh can see that war is imminent between the Americans and the British, and I think he hopes to use this war to help defend Native American homelands in the Old Northwest. The problem for Tecumseh is always gonna be one of logistics. It’s one of bringing in large numbers of warriors...and supplying them, and feeding them, and providing them with adequate arms and ammunition.

Stephen Warren, Historian: My sense of Tecumseh is that he was keenly aware of moments of opportunity; and moments to strike; moments to act — and 1811 was not one of those moments.

Narrator: The dog days of summer 1811 were just reaching their peak when Tecumseh embarked on one last grueling tour — heading South this time, to what the Shawnees called the Mid-Day — determined to bring the Chickasawas, Choctaws and Creeks of Mississippi and Alabama into the confederacy, and to shore up British support for the movement — as Britain itself edged closer and closer to a new war with the United States. Before leaving Prophetstown, Tecumseh urged his younger brother to do everything he could to keep from being drawn into a fight with Harrison prematurely — then made one last stop at Vincennes to see Harrison himself before continuing south — hoping to convince him not initiate hostilities.

Stephen Warren, Historian: Well, I think it was crucial to hold off for several reasons. The first is that Tecumseh was the only person equipped to lead; the second being that British support was crucial — and, whatever they did, it had to be coordinated with the British — and third, I think Tecumseh was really confident that his Southeastern tour would result in a great many adherents.

Harrison: August 6th, 1811. The day before he set out, he paid me a visit, and labored hard to convince me that he had no other intention by his journey to the south than to prevail on all the tribes to unite in the bonds of peace. August 7th.  He is now upon the last round to put a finishing stroke to his work. I hope, however, before his return that that part of the fabric which he had considered complete will be demolished, and even its foundations rooted up.

Narrator: In late August — writing that Tecumseh’s “great talents alone were holding together the heterogeneous mass” of warriors on the Wabash — Harrison received permission to march on Prophetstown — and one month later — on September 26th, 1811 — at the head of a force of nearly 1000 men — headed north towards the Indian stronghold, a hundred and eighty miles away. As reports came in to Prophetstown of Harrison’s approaching army, hundreds of warriors converged on the Indian village to defend it.

Colin Calloway, Historian: As Tenskwatawa watches the American army advance, he is faced with the question of what to do. Do you sit and wait, to see if the American intentions are peaceful, or should you strike against it? When Tenskwatawa hears of the American army advancing, he interprets this as an act of aggression.  

Narrator: Around two o’clock on the afternoon of November 6th Harrison’s thousand-man force clambered up a steep ravine on the eastern side of a narrow stream called Burnett’s creek, and went into camp on a narrow bench of high ground, planted with high oak trees. One mile to the east lay Prophetstown, stretching south along the Wabash from the mouth of the Tippecanoe. As the light began to fail, two officers and an interpreter rode out under a white flag to convey Harrison’s orders that the Indian camp disperse.

Stephen Warren, Historian: Tippecanoe. There’s a crucial moment on November 6th, when Harrison arrives. He arrives with more than a thousand men. And Harrison and Tenskwatawa agree to meet the next day, to discuss how they might reach some kind of compromise. But on the night of November 6th, Tenskwatawa is besieged by his Western Algonquian allies, and they tell him, “Look. You know, we have to fight, we have to surprise them. They think we’re going to have a discussion, but let’s wage a preemptive strike.” To come all that way and to do nothing but wait for Tecumseh made little sense to them...And so Tenskwatawa goes against his brother’s wishes for him. You know, he caves to pressure. And not only that, but he tells his allies that they’ll be safe from American bullets — that his power as a medicine man is such that no one will be harmed.

Narrator: Sometime in the night, a long column of warriors began to file silently out of the village — heading in a long arc for the northwest corner of the American encampment.

Donald L. Fixico, Historian: It was a very wet morning. Sentries are posted and everything. And possibly, Winnebago warriors, but certainly warriors tried to penetrate the camp, crawling into the camp. And they even make it past the sentries.

Narrator: Around four in the morning, a picket stationed a few yards out beyond the left flank of the camp thought he saw something moving in the trees. Whipping his musket to his shoulder, he fired blindly into the gloom — mortally wounding a Kickapoo warrior as he attempted to steal into the camp. Harrison himself was in his tent, when the first shot rang out — followed by a series bloodcurdling war cries — and a tremendous crash of muskets — as the war party rushed in. The Battle of Tippecanoe had begun. 

John Sugden, Biographer: It was a classic Indian attack. If you don’t have the numbers on your side, you make a sudden attack and try to overwhelm and demoralize the enemy quickly. And it was carried through at Tippecanoe with great determination — considering how few warriors there were. And they didn’t have much ammunition. The Indians were a very mobile force. They’re almost like water — they gave way to things; and they strengthened around weak points in a very flexible way. They didn't have to wait for orders from chiefs — they fought very much individually. So if they perceived a force getting out of its depth — moving forward and getting split up from the main force — they could easily rally round and start surrounding it, and cutting it to pieces. I mean, if there had been more Indians on the ground, the Indians might have been capable of inflicting great damage.

Colin Calloway, Historian: The Indian warriors attack Harrison's army in camp. For a moment, it looks as if the Indians have infiltrated the lines; there's confusion. But as the light increases, it becomes clear to the Americans that the Indians lack the numbers, and that they lack the ammunition to carry this assault home. And, eventually, the Indians are driven from the field. In reality, the Americans suffered probably more casualties than the Indians. The American force was superior; the American force was better armed; the American force had more ammunition. But I do think that it represents a blow to the confederacy.

Narrator: On the night of November 8th— two days after the battle— Harrison’s soldiers edged warily into Prophetstown for the first time — only to find that the confederated forces had dispersed into the surrounding country side.Ordering his men to plunder the village — setting fire to the lodges — and destroying all the Indian’s food supplies — Harrison headed back down the Wabash towards Vincennes — declaring in dispatches his mission had been accomplished.

Donald L. Fixico, Historian: Following the defeat at Prophetstown one would think that all of this was over. And it was not — it was just the beginning in fact. It was an impossible task of the largest scale for Tecumseh to rebuild his army — and yet he did it — making twice the effort, twice the stamina.

Colin Calloway, Historian: When Tecumseh comes home, he’s reputed to have grabbed the Prophet by the hair and shaken him — and reprimanded him — scolded him — for this foolish action.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: Tecumseh, we know, is very angry with his brother after this battle. And I think the Prophet spends the rest of his life trying to get back into a position of prominence.

Donald L. Fixico, Historian: So Tecumseh has a choice. Do you discard the Prophet? Or do you reunite [with] him in this effort? And he realizes that he has to embrace him again. And he forgives his brother. And so now we’re in the next chapter of rebuilding this huge army. And this time — make no [mistaken] doubt about it — Tecumseh is going to be there.

Narrator: Though Harrison had destroyed the Indians food supplies and scattered the Indian warriors, he had not destroyed the confederacy itself, and he had not destroyed Tecumseh — and in the end, only succeeded in emboldening the great Shawnee warrior — who, on returning to the Wabash in January 1812, immediately set out to reassemble the scattered alliance — convinced — despite all appearances to the contrary — that the moment of opportunity for the Indian confederacy was rapidly approaching.

Stephen Warren, Historian: I think, in a way, Harrison creates a huge problem for all Americans living in the Northwest Territories — because he disperses those who are antagonistic to the United States everywhere across the Midwest. They have not given up. They’re not putting their weapons down...

Narrator: All through the winter and spring of 1812 — as long festering tensions between the United States and Great Britain spiraled upward — Tecumseh labored tirelessly to rebuild the confederacy and to shore up British support before a renewed offensive could be launched against Prophetstown. By May, more than eight hundred warriors had streamed back into the village — while across the Northwest more than four thousand warriors were on the move — the largest Indian confederacy ever mustered on the North American continent.By the third week of June, Tecumseh himself was on his way north towards a British fort on the Canadian side of the Detroit River — hoping to secure supplies and ammunition — when a messenger arrived bearing news he had long been waiting for. Three days earlier, on June 18th, the United States had officially declared war on Britain — over the fate of the long-contested Northwestern frontier. The War of 1812 had begun — bringing with it the last best hope of a permanent Indian homeland east of the Mississippi.

John Sugden, Biographer: And of course, the British were at a crisis point themselves; they needed American Indian allies. They were fighting a war in which the odds were against them.  They wanted to defend the Canadian line, and of course they needed manpower — only the Indians could fill that void for them. So it was an inevitable alliance at that point. Tecumseh needed them, and they needed him.And, certainly, Tecumseh’s war aims — he was still — incredibly, I have to say, in 1812 — looking at some possible way to regain the Ohio boundary as a boundary between the white settlements and the Indians. And he sold that goal to the British.

Narrator: Arriving at the undermanned British outpost of Ft. Malden in the waning days of June — where most were convinced that Canada would fall before the approaching American army — Tecumseh changed the military equation on the ground in less than three weeks — rallying wavering Indian allies to the cause and bolstering British resolve — and astonishing the British commander in charge, General Isaac Brock — with his extraordinary military skills, and sheer force of personality.

John Sugden, Biographer: I mean, Brock’s remark is a classic one. He spoke to Tecumseh for a very short time, a mere few weeks. But he wrote back to the British Prime Minister, and he says that, “I’ve talked to the Indian chiefs, and there are some extraordinary characters amongst them. But here’s Tecumseh,” he says — “a more gallant or sagacious warrior does not exist.”

Narrator: Tecumseh’s brilliance on the field of battle in the summer of 1812 would cement his reputation among the British high command as one of the greatest military leaders of all time. In little more than three weeks, the small but highly mobile force under his command completely unnerved the American army led by William Hull — forcing him to retreat back across the Detroit River to the American side — and effectively bringing the invasion of Canada to an end.On August 4th, at the Battle of Brownstown south of Detroit — with only twenty-four warriors at his command — Tecumseh attacked and routed an American force six times as large — killing nineteen, wounding twelve, while himself losing only a single warrior.

Colin Calloway, Historian: Tecumseh’s finest hour is probably Detroit in 1812, when Tecumseh teams up with Isaac Brock, who finally seems to be the person who is going to deliver on the promises that the British have been making so long. Tecumseh and Brock together mastermind the capture of Detroit.

Narrator: On August 16th, at the Battle of Detroit, Tecumseh convinced the American defenders inside the fort that they were facing an army many times greater than their own — parading his small host of warriors again and again through a clearing in the forest.Before the British and Indian attack had even begun, a white flag appeared above the ramparts of the fort, and the American army marched out and surrendered their weapons.It was one of the most humiliating defeats ever suffered by an American army.        

R. David Edmunds, Historian: Fort Detroit falls. Fort Michillimackinaw falls. Tecumseh and Brock, who were very close, are able to take Fort Detroit. They’re able to, generally, gain the upper hand here on the Detroit frontier.

Colin Calloway, Historian: And it seems as if the vision of an independent Indian confederacy — an independent Indian state, if you like, supported by British allies, but independent of the United States — is on the brink of becoming a reality.         

R. David Edmunds, Historian: And then — unfortunately for Tecumseh — and unfortunately for tribal people — General Isaac Brock is killed fighting the Americans over by Niagara. And the new British commander is named Proctor. And he’s much less aggressive, and much more interested in just defending Canada — and in not really helping tribal people retake part of Ohio from the Americans. Tecumseh has to continually goad Proctor to march against the Americans. They do invade Ohio twice, attempting to take Fort Meigs — which was an American fort near modern Toledo — and are unsuccessful.                                             

Narrator: In the fall of 1813, the British fleet was defeated not far from Detroit at the Battle of Lake Erie, ceding control of the Great Lakes to the Americans. By then,Lalawethika and a ragged band of followers appeared in his brother’s camp along the Detroit River in Ontario — driven from Indiana by their old nemesis, William Henry Harrison — who even now was moving north at the head of a vastly reinforced American army.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: The Americans invade Canada. And particularly after Perry’s victory on Lake Erie, the British want to abandon the Detroit frontier and flee to what is now Toronto. And Tecumseh makes them stand and fight.    

Colin Calloway, Historian: The British-Indian army turns to make a stand at Moraviantown, on the Thames River in Ontario, in 1813. The outcome of the battle seems really to have been a foregone conclusion. By the time the British general [Proctor] actually stops to turn to fight, he has lost the confidence not only of his Indian allies, but of his own men. When the fighting breaks out, the British resistance is minimal. What resistance is mounted is mounted by Tecumseh and the Indian warriors.

Narrator: The final British betrayal would come on the cold, misty morning of October 5th, 1813, when — as Harrison’s vastly superior American forces began their attack — the British simply abandoned their Indian allies entirely, and left them to fend for themselves on the field of battle.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: And in one of the more remarkable speeches given throughout American history, Tecumseh says to the British: “Look. You have somewhere to go. But we are standing here, and we are fighting for our homeland. And if you want to run, you run. But leave us the guns and ammunition, because we will stand and fight.”

Tecumseh: Listen! We are much astonished to see you tying up everything and preparing to run the other way. You always told us to remain here and take care of our lands. It made our hearts glad to hear that was your wish. But now we see you are drawing back like a fat animal, running off with its tail between its legs...Listen! Father! The Americans have not yet defeated us by land. We, therefore, wish to remain here, and fight our enemy should they make their appearance. If you have an idea of going away, give us the arms and ammunition and you may go and welcome for it. Our lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it is his will, we wish to leave our bones upon them.

John Sugden, Biographer: And then, finally, at the end, you often tell great leaders in the way they react in adversity, rather than victory.He knew that the British had given way before they engaged themselves. And, yet, there is no question of him retreating — there is no question of him doing the “sensible” thing, which is to fight another day. He has committed himself to this act. He has said he’s going to defend this land — and, if necessary, he’s going die for this land.  And that’s what he does.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: And you couldn’t think, in some ways, of a more fitting way for Tecumseh to die. He dies in the final battle here for the control of the Great Lakes. And he dies surrounded by his comrades, and his brother. He dies killed by the Americans. And in the aftermath, his body is mutilated so badly by Harrison’s Kentucky militia that the Americans who know him can’t really identify him.

Colin Calloway, Historian: And with Tecumseh dies, of course, the person who has held together the Indian confederacy — the person who has represented the best hope for Indian independence in North America...The death of Tecumseh puts, in a sense, finality on the American conquest of that area — that what we know now as an American heartland — is gonna be American — there will be no place in there for Indian people.

Stephen Warren, Historian: I think Tecumseh is, in a sense, saved by his death. He’s saved for immortality through death on the battlefield.

John Sugden, Biographer: One of the things Tecumseh does is he never lets you down. He was there, articulating his position — uncompromisingly pro-Native American position — he never signs the treaties. He never reneges on those basic as principles of the sacrosanct aboriginal holding of this territory. He bows out at the peak of this great movement he is leading. He’s there, right at the end — whatever the odds are — fighting for it into the dying moments.

George Blanchard, Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma: To a lot of people — the Native American — I guess he's our hero — our hero...

Colin Calloway, Historian: I think one of the things that is so important about Tecumseh is that he is person who by his vision and by his personality and the way he conducts himself gives us glimpses of humanity at its best. That in the most difficult of situations — in the most hopeless of situations, perhaps — people can have the courage to stand up and fight for what they believe in. Courage in the face of adversity; Tecumseh personifies it.

Kevin Williams, Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma: Hope — hope and freedom. That’s what I thought he stood for. And his vision that he had — you know, the way he looked into the future and tried to stop progress for the red people.

Sherman Tiger, Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma: For some people, they may call him a troublemaker. And I think that’s because, in the end, he lost. Had he won, he’d have been, you know, a hero. But I think, to a degree, he still has to be recognized as a hero, for what he attempted to do. If he had, you know, a little more help, maybe he would of got a little farther down the line. If the British would have backed him up, like they were supposed to have, you know, maybe the United States is only half as big as it is today.

Trail of Tears

Man: Hello gentleman, I’m quite concerned.

Narrator: He was called Kah-nung-d-cla-geh, “the one who goes on themountaintop,” or simply, “The Ridge.” In the long struggle between Indians and Americans, few native leaders clung to the hope of peaceful coexistence longer.Few others invested more inthe professed protections ofthe American legal system. Fewset more stock in the promisesof the American governmentand its constitution.By 1830, the Ridge had already struck a series of hard bargains with theUnited States. In return for the safety and security of the Cherokee people — and the right to remain on the land of their forefathers — the Ridge had taken pains to shed the life he had been raised to.

Major Ridge: (in Cherokee)I am one of the native sons of these wild woods.

Narrator: He had been born in 1771, intoa Cherokee Nation thatstretched through the SouthernAppalachians...and had come of age in thelandscape on which the Cherokeestory had been written.The wings of the Great Buzzardhad carved the mountains and

the valleys; Uktena, the horned serpent, had made his frightful marks on the tall rocks; the Creator had set the first man and woman in this very place.

Theda Perdue, Historian: Christians had been cast out oftheir own Garden of Eden, but theCherokees lived in their Eden.It’s the land that they believed theirancestors had always inhabited.

Major Ridge: We obtained these lands from theliving God above. I would willinglydie to preserve them.

Narrator: In the Ridge’s youth, theCherokee Nation had been underconstant threat. As a youngwarrior, it was his duty tokeep a wary eye on anyencroachment by their nearneighbors — the Shawnees, theCreeks, Choctaws and Chickasaws...and then a new force in theSoutheastern mountains: theAmericans.The Cherokees picked the wrong

side in the American revolution...and paid dearly. The Ridge watched American riflemen burn out his own town — one of fifty they destroyed in Cherokee territory. He lashed out; took his first American scalp at age 17...and fought the United States past the point of hope.

Russell G. Townsend, Historic Preservationist: For a generation of Cherokees thatdestruction was all they knew. Theyhad seen their world kind ofevaporate around them.

Narrator: The Cherokee Nation was still on its knees in 1805. Its population had dwindled to 12,000, and it had lost more than half its land.Even after the Cherokees andother tribes had signed peacetreaties with the UnitedStates, the Ridge knew the safety of his people was not agiven thing; he understood thatthe central conflict stillpertained: The United Statesmeant to have what was left ofthe Cherokee homeland. Ridgemeant to save it.But he knew that this battlewith the United States requireda nimble and artful newapproach.Preserving the Cherokee Nationmeant walking for a time downthe new path America wasoffering.

Rev. Gambold: Please accept this, Brother Ridge,

as a small gift.

Major Ridge: (in Cherokee)Thank you.Thank you John.After we eat let’s enjoy this

together.

Theda Perdue, Historian: The United States at the end of theAmerican Revolution developed apolicy called civilization.It helped fund missionaryorganizations to go into the Indiannations, particularly in the south,and teach Indians how to be AngloAmericans: how to grow wheatinstead of corn; how to eat mealsat regular times instead of whenthey were hungry; how to dress inEuropean clothing; how to speak theEnglish language; how to pray inchurch at designated times; how tolive the kind of life that Anglo Americans believed was a civilizedlife.

Gayle Ross, Descendant of Chief John Ross: The promises of the United StatesGovernment were that if the Cherokees,the Creeks, the Choctaws, theSeminoles, the Chickasaws couldsomehow assimilate ways of livingthat were more like their whiteneighbors that they could be thepolitical and social equal of theirwhite neighbors.Literally Thomas Jefferson onceassured the Indian leaders in aspeech that he believed they couldbecome the equal of white people.

Narrator: “You will unite yourselves withus,” President Jefferson said,“join our great councils andform one people with us. And weshall all be Americans. Youwill mix with us by marriage.Your blood will run within ourveins and will spread with usover this great continent.”

Daniel Ross: (in Cherokee) Bear. Good Afternoon.

Bear: (in Cherokee) I need a part for my gun.

Daniel Ross: John! Flintlock!

Narrator: John Ross, the future Cherokeechief, grew up at thecrossroads of an emerging world...where white settlers andIndians were just beginning astrange new dance ofaccommodation.

Bear: (in Cherokee)Thank you!

Narrator:John’s mother Mollie, a memberof the Bird clan, had married aScotsman, Daniel Ross. Ross wasamong the growing number ofwhite men who took Cherokeewives, and gained access toland and trade in the bargain.

Daniel Ross: John.

Gayle Ross, Descendant of Chief John Ross: There would have been manydifferent classes of Cherokeemaking their way in and out of thestore, from the full-bloodtraditional people to the wealthiermixed-blood families that were justbeginning to establish themselves.

Narrator: The Ross’s spoke English athome; John had English-speakingtutors. But John Ross was aCherokee because of hismother’s blood — an acceptedmember of the Bird clan. Hegrew up surrounded by peoplewhose lives ran to traditionalCherokee rhythms. He was proudto have a Cherokee name, “Koo-wees-koo-wee”, or “mysteriouslittle white bird”

Daniel Ross: John.

Gayle Ross, Descendant of Chief John Ross: There’s a story that’s told aboutthe time when he was five. And hisfather had bought a new little suitfor him to wear at the time ofGreen Corn Dance. And his motherdressed him up in his white man’ssuit. And the other children teased himso unmercifully that supposedly hecame back home and insisted onbeing allowed to change into theeveryday clothes of the otherCherokee children before he wouldgo back out and join thefestivities.

Narrator: Cherokee land — all of it — was owned in common by thetribe, but any Cherokee couldwork and improve as much landas personal energy and privateresources allowed. And theRidge and his wife, Susannah,were energetic and resourcefulhomesteaders; exemplars of“civilization.” As the years went by, and theRidge’s farming wealth grew,U.S. agents would occasionallyreceive optimistic reports fromthe Ridge family.Major Ridge, as he was nowcalled, knew what they wantedto hear: “I take pleasure tostate that every head of hishousehold has his house andfarm...The poorer class...very contentedly performthe duties of the kitchen. Theysew, they weave, they spin,they cook our meals and actwell.”Major Ridge’s hope for the

future was a group of educated young men who could build a strong new Cherokee Nation, reckon US laws and government and outsmart federal negotiators who were after their land. His greatest hope was his own son. John Ridge was a frail boy; hampered by a disease that occasionally made it difficult to walk, but the Major recognized his son’s strengths. When the U.S. War Department offered to pay tuition for John and his cousin, Elias Boudinot, at a missionary school in Connecticut, Major Ridge grabbed the chance.

Major Ridge: (in Cherokee)It will be hard for you but youmust conduct yourself well amongthe white people. When you finishschool and return home you canhelp us.

Susannah Ridge: (in Cherokee)Little one, don’t forget where yougrew up. Learn a different way, butdon’t forget. Goodbye. We will seeeach other again.

Elias Boudinot: So I read your essay.

Narrator: John Ridge grew to manhoodamong white Christianeducators, absorbing thelessons of the bible and theU.S. Constitution alike. Even900 miles away from CherokeeTerritory, he never betrayed ahint of pain at his separationfrom home and family.

Jace Weaver, Writer: Even from his earliest school days,John Ridge is described by histeachers as being cold, a littlebit aloof, as being haughty.They compare him to his cousin,Buck, who became Elias Boudinot,who was much friendlier, much morecongenial, but not as good astudent. John Ridge was brilliant.

Narrator: The faculty selected JohnRidge, out of all the Indianstudents at Cornwall, toprepare an essay for PresidentJames Monroe. In it, he sangthe praises of his Christianbenefactors, and his ownparents: “My father and motherare both ignorant of theEnglish language, but it isastonishing to see them exertall their power to have theirchildren educated, like thewhites!”For all his scholarlyachievements, John Ridge’sfragile health failed in theNew England winters. He spentmuch of his time in his room,attended by the schoolsteward's daughter, Sarah BirdNorthrup...until a doctoralerted her mother that the twoseemed to have fallen in love.When Sarah confessed, theNorthrups sent her away to livewith relatives, the entireaffair kept secret.It took nearly two years, butJohn won over Sarah’s parents.He regained his health,qualified as a lawyer, andpromised to take care of their daughter.

Minister: (to John)Do you thus solemnly and sincerelyengage and promise?

John Ridge: I will, with the help of God.

Minister: And you Miss Sarah Bird Northrup, with your right hand, take Mr. John

Ridge by his right hand. In the presence of God and these witnesses, do you take, John Ridge, whom you now hold by the hand, to be your wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward...forsaking all others, keep only unto him...conducting toward him in all respects, as a kind and tender, virtuous and faithful wife...

Protestor #1: This marriage is a sin in God’seyes!

Protestor #2: Shame on you!

Protestor #3: Shame!

John Ridge: Go! Go!

Jace Weaver, Writer: The reaction of New England whites — enlightened, progressive NewEngland whites — makes a mark onhim. He had been told: 'get aneducation, take up western ways,you can be part of us.'He will never believe whites inexactly the same way again.

John Ridge: An Indian is almost consideredaccursed...The scum of the earthare considered sacred in comparison.If an Indian is educated...yet he is an Indian...and themost stupid and illiterate whiteman will disdain and triumph overthis worthy individual.

Narrator: While John Ridge was away inConnecticut, John Ross was ayoung man on the rise. A traderlike his father, Ross cashed inselling food and provisions tothe well-funded Christianmissions sprouting around theCherokee Nation.He married a Cherokee womanand made a home on 420 primeplanting acres. But Ross wasdrawn more and more into thetroubled state of Cherokeediplomacy. The Cherokee Nation’s long alliance with United Stateswas fraying. Washington wasdragging its feet on paymentsowed under the terms of earliertreaties, and strong-armingthe Cherokees to sell offmore territory.The Cherokee Nation had formeda powerful new centralgovernment to push back,determined “never again to cedeone more foot of land.” Andthey needed able English-speaking men like John Ross toarticulate the Cherokee position to the United Statesgovernment.

Jace Weaver, Writer: John Ross was not from a prominentCherokee family the way John Ridgewas. But Ridge takes John Ross kindof under his wing as a protégé.Here in John Ross he’s got someonewho’s only an eighth Cherokee, is veryfamiliar with white society because ofhis father. Equally adept atnegotiating both of those worlds.

Narrator: With strong leaders like Rossand the Ridges, the Cherokeescould hold the United Statesgovernment to its word for awhile, but the situation on theground was changing nonetheless.As dreams of cotton wealthdrove prospective planters deepinto the interior south, othertribes were giving up hugeswaths of neighboring lands.The fourteen-thousandCherokees found themselvessurrounded on every side byAmerican settlers; scores ofwhites began to scrabble ontoCherokee farmland.A small group of Cherokees hadalready taken America up on itsoffer of new land west of theMississippi, in ArkansasTerritory.But the Cherokee NationalCouncil, to a man, was stillconfident it had the strengthto stand its ground.Major Ridge, for one, had muchto defend: nearly 10 millionacres owned in common by the tribe, and his own plantation.According to the U.S.Superintendent of IndianAffairs, Ridge’s farm “was in ahigher state of cultivation andhis buildings better than thoseof any other person in thatregion, the whites notexcepted.”In twenty years, Ridge hadcleared nearly 300 acres forcash crops: cotton, tobacco,wheat and indigo; he oversawhis own orchard, dairy andVineyard — and as many asthirty slaves.

John Ross, Descendant: John Ross owned slaves andJohn Ridge, when he got married,Major Ridge gave him like twentyslaves. And so he was a slave owneralso.

Jace Weaver, Writer: About eight percent of Cherokeesowned slaves. They were mainlythe mixed-blood elite. Butmore and more that mixed-bloodelite is adopting the lifestyle ofthe Southern planter culture.

John Ridge: We did so well with tobacco in thepast that we’re thinking of addingto that, or perhaps even some cattle.

Susannah Ridge: (line in Cherokee)

Major Ridge: (line in Cherokee)

John Ridge: (translating)My father says the rains were heavyhere and the cotton was planted late,but cotton prices are rising again.

Major Ridge: (line in Cherokee)

John Ridge: (translating)My father apologizes to you ma’am. Hesays the cost of your fine dresses isgoing up.

Major Ridge: (in Cherokee)Toast

Narrator: Not all Cherokees welcomedthese new opportunities.“Civilization” was beginning todraw hard class distinctionsthat had never existed intraditional Cherokee society.The lives of most full-blood Cherokees were still marked byloss. What little remained oftheir old hunting grounds wasplayed out. They dependedalmost entirely on subsistencefarming. And they worried thattheir leaders were in thrall to the ways of the whites.But there were still elementalties that bound all Cherokees,and change that benefited all...including a signal advanceby a Cherokee named Sequoyah.

Gayle Ross, Descendant of Chief John Ross: Sequoyah was devoted to enablingthe Cherokee people to have attheir command an essential powerthat he saw white society have,that being the ability to write inthe Cherokee language.Ultimately he did something that noone has ever done and that wascreate a system of reading andwriting in a language when hehimself could not read or write inany other language.

Chad Smith, Principal Chief, Cherokee Nation: There was one character for everysyllable. So with 86 syllables aCherokee speaker could learn towrite in several weeks. And it’sactually much more efficient andeffective than you could ever askof English.

Gayle Ross, Descendant of Chief John Ross: Within a matter of a few years theCherokee Nation was literate. TheCherokee Phoenix, the translationof the Bible into Cherokee. Family stories were written down. Medicinepeople wrote down all of theirformulas for healing. It literallyrevolutionized Cherokee society.

Narrator: At the end of the 1820s, MajorRidge saw a new Cherokee Nationon the rise. Cherokee population grew every year. Its National Council was strongerthan ever; and a new generationhad come of age. John Ridge had taken a seat on the council. And one of the most impressive new young leaders was John Ross.

John Ross, Descendant: John Ross he didn’t look like a real full-blood Cherokee, but thefull-bloods, the Cherokee people,trusted him. He was what theylooked for in a leader, and he wasin for the common people.

Narrator: Among the traditional full-blood Cherokees — who made upthe overwhelming majority ofthe tribe — John Ross gained areputation for integrity. While

serving under the principal chief, Ross had become an eager student of the abiding Cherokee ways. It was Ross who authored a new constitution that all Cherokees

could embrace. Ross’s constitution created a democratically elected government mirrored on the United States. There was an executive, a legislative and a judicial branch. A strong National Council was vested with the power to protect all Cherokee land.

Carey Tilley, Historian: This is the culmination. This is aculmination of a movement and isprobably the greatest unity thatthe Cherokee people had ever seen.

Narrator: The new constitution drewbright and indisputable bordersaround Cherokee territory, anddeclared the Cherokee Nation’sabsolute sovereignty withinthose borders.

Jace Weaver, Writer: Georgia reacts to the Cherokeepassage of a constitution in 1827very badly. They say, “If they setup a constitutional governmentwe’ll never be able to get rid ofthem.”

Narrator: “The absolute title to thelands in controversy is inGeorgia,” read one resolution,“and she may rightfully possessherself of them when, and bywhat means, she pleases.”“These misguided men,” a statelegislator said of theCherokees, “should be taughtthat there is no alternative between their removal beyondthe limits of the state ofGeorgia and their extinction.”As the Georgia legislaturebegan to kick back, other, moreominous events, were unfolding:the discovery of gold inCherokee territory, whichcaused a stampede of whiteprospectors...and the first stirringof a populist politicalmovement that sent tremorsthrough Indian lands all overthe East.This hard-edged new movementfound voice in Andrew Jackson,whose ascent to the presidencyin 1829 owed to the newlyenfranchised Southern frontiersmen.In his first address toCongress, President Jacksonannounced his intention to doas his voters pleased, which isto say, rid the East of theIndian tribes once and for all.He championed new legislationgiving him power to offer thetribes land west of theMississippi...if they wouldgo nicely.

Gayle Ross, Descendant of Chief John Ross: The Indian removal bill wasJackson’s first priority once hewas in office. It became the firstmajor focus of his administration.It did reflect a fundamental shiftin the way that America wasbeginning to define itself. Notvery many people in Georgia andTennessee, Alabama at that timewere willing to even go so far asto say that Indian people werepeople.

Carey Tilley, Historian: The thinking of the day becomesmore racist that the Cherokees areinferior and cannot be like thewhites. It’s convenient rhetoric tosay that Cherokees are inferior andwe need to get them out of the way,out of harm’s way, as Jackson wouldput it.

Narrator: Other tribes read the bleaksigns, and reluctantly began toprepare for removal. But theCherokees reached out forsupport among their friends andbenefactors along the Easternseaboard.

Jace Weaver, Writer: The Cherokees were one of the“civilized tribes.” They had madesuch strides. So they cut asympathetic figure tonortheasterners.

John Ridge: I ask you. Shall red men live, orshall they be swept from the earth?It is with you, and this public atlarge, the decision chiefly rests.Must they perish? Will you pushthem from you or will you savethem?

Narrator: The Congressional debate overthe Indian Removal bill was asectional brawl that drew theentire country’s attention. Acampaign organized by“Benevolent Ladies” floodedCongress with pro-Indianletters and petitions.“Who can look an Indian in theface,” one Senator thundered,“and say to him: for more thanforty years we have made to youthe most solemn of promises; wenow violate and trample uponthem all, but offer you, intheir stead, anotherguarantee.”New England Senators voted 11-1

against Jackson’s removal bill. But the unanimous bloc of Southerners assured its passage in the Senate. The vote was closer in the House — 102-97. But the legislation passed. And President Andrew Jackson’s signature made Indian removal the law of the land.

Carey Tilley, Historian: The State of Georgia basically saidto its citizens this land is yours.They divided up with the landlottery and basically toldtheir people to have at it.

Narrator: While white settlers bought uplottery tickets — and a chanceat Cherokee land — the Georgialegislature bent itself toobliterating the state within

its state, passing new laws overriding Cherokee sovereignty. Meetings of the Cherokee legislature and courts were deemed illegal. All people residing on Cherokee land were now subject to Georgia law. Missionaries who had lived among the Cherokees for years were forced to sign oaths of allegiance to Georgia. Those who refused were jailed.

John Ross, Descendant: And Jackson basically toldCherokees that he couldn’t do

anything about it. It was state rights. And you know they couldn’t have any protection from the federal government. The only way they were gonna get protection was if they moved.

Narrator: Making a plan to battleAndrew Jackson and Georgia fellto the Cherokees newly-electedPrincipal Chief. Major Ridgehad decided not to run for theoffice, asserting that theCherokees would be best servedby an English-speaking Chief.His own son was too young, sothe Ridge backed John Ross.At 38, Ross himself was barelyeligible, but he won electioneasily.And one of his first acts inoffice — rewriting the BloodLaw — sent a clear signal: anyCherokee who made a deal tosell land to the United Stateswithout the consent of theentire tribe faced direconsequences. “...Citizens of this nation,” the law read, “may kill him orthem so offending, in any mannermost convenient...”Chief Ross then set out toshame Jackson and thesupporters of Indian removal...And he was going to use theUnited States federal courts todo it.

John Ross: ...at least what is left.

Narrator: Along with America’s mostesteemed advocate — formerattorney general William Wirt — Ross and his closest advisersbegan to frame the Cherokeesargument for self-determinationin their own territory.

Cherokee Leader: (in Cherokee)Of course we are a separate people.Who does not know this?

Major Ridge: (in Cherokee)We have made many treaties givingup our lands. Were we not asovereign nation, to sign thesetreaties?

Narrator: The Cherokee Nation and theirsupporters filed more than adozen separate suits in federalcourt; two made it all the wayto the Supreme Court of theUnited States.The question in both cases wasthe flash point of Americanpolitics in 1830: where did federal authority end andstates’ rights begin? Did federal treaties with theCherokee Nation supersedeGeorgia state law? Or couldGeorgia do as she pleasedwithin her borders.The Court dodged the questionin the first case, but in thesecond, Worcester v. Georgia,it could not.Samuel Worcester, a missionarywho lived in the CherokeeNation, had been jailed byGeorgia officials for refusingto take an oath of allegiance.Wirt argued that his arrest wasunconstitutional...thatCherokee tribal laws could notbe written over by the state ofGeorgia.The opinion of the Court,written by Chief Justice JohnMarshall, could not have beenmore clear:

Narrator: “The Cherokee nation is adistinct community,” Marshallwrote, “occupying its ownterritory, with boundariesaccurately described, in whichthe laws of Georgia can have noforce, and which the citizensof Georgia have no right toenter but with the assent ofthe Cherokees themselves.”

Chad Smith, Principal Chief, Cherokee Nation: What else could you ask for but avery clear and sympathetic order ofthe highest court in the land — interpreting the supreme law of theland. The Cherokees just wereecstatic.

Gayle Ross, Descendant of Chief John Ross: They followed the law. Theyfollowed this policy of agovernment-to-governmentrelationship. And the Supreme Courtdecision was a complete vindication.

Jace Weaver, Writer: Now, finally, this was theirvictory. Now they’ll have someprotection.

Narrator: John Ridge was still inWashington when he got wordthat the state of Georgia wasrefusing to recognize theSupreme Court decision...orthe sovereignty of the CherokeeNation.

Jace Weaver, Writer: He goes to the White House and getsan audience with President Jackson.He asked him bluntly if he willforce Georgia to comply with theSupreme Court order and Jacksonsays, he will not.

Gayle Ross, Descendant of Chief John Ross: Andrew Jackson — the onlypresident in the history of theUnited States to openly defy aSupreme Court order. He is said tohave remarked that Chief JusticeMarshall made his decision. Let himenforce it. And to the Georgians hesaid, “Light a fire under them.They’ll move.”

John Ridge: It’s over. He wants us gone. Eventhose we call friends say we can’t resist anymore.

Major Ridge: (in Cherokee) And you? Do you think we have no choice anymore?

Chad Smith, Principal Chief, Cherokee Nation: The political reality is settingin. The issues became more clear.You could stay and fight, or stayand resist, or leave. And it was avery painful decision. It was anemotional decision. It was theUnited States driving usintentionally into that choice.

Narrator: Once Jackson had openly sidedwith Georgia, every day broughtfresh stories of Cherokeesbeing whipped, run from theirfarms, and even killed by whiteGeorgians; and the CherokeeNation didn’t have the strengthto fight them off. When the United States renewedits offer of a cash settlementfor Cherokee territory and agrant of land west of the Mississippi, the Ridges wereready to listen.

Carey Tilley, Historian: At this point, the Ridges see theyielding of land as inevitable.What it’s coming down to in theirminds is a choice betweenpreserving their land or preservingtheir sovereignty. So they believeit’s more important to remain asovereign nation and distancethemselves from the threat that’simminent.

John Ridge: I’m told it is much like here. Wewill come to think of it as home.

Cherokee Leader #1: (in Cherokee)If that land is rich, like ourshere why is no one living there?

John Ridge: Well, it is far. Too far forothers, but not for us.

John Ross: They would have us leave our land, and take up way out west, here...

Traditional Cherokee #1:  What are you doing to stop this?

Traditional Cherokee #2: You are the Chief! Who can say wehave to leave?

Traditional Cherokee #3: You must stop those who betray us.This land is ours!

Traditional Cherokee #4: It’s true, what we’re saying.

Narrator: John Ross was a man in the middle.He knew where the people stood, but the Ridges were Cherokee aristocracy...esteemed leaders in the Nation.The family had plenty of friendsin the US government. And Ross wasnot happy that John Ridge was preparingto run against him for principal chiefin the upcoming tribal elections.This sort of infighting, Ross believed,invited peril.He’d seen federal negotiators divideand conquer the leadership of everyother nearby tribe. Unity, he knew,had been the Cherokees salvation; thetribe had to speak to the United Stateswith one voice.

Russell G. Townsend, Historic Preservationist: I think he heard the traditionalvoice and felt compelled by it, felt sense a duty to it. Certainly he had sixteen thousand people telling him to stay. I think he wanted to do what those voices were telling him to do.

Carey Tilley, Historian: The Ridges kept saying publicly, ifwe could if we could just talk tothe to the Cherokee people then wecan convince them that this is ouronly option. And they felt likeJohn Ross was being heavy handed inkeeping them from speaking asopenly as they liked to.

Narrator: The duty of the minority toyield and unite is sanctionedby patriotism and virtue,” Rossproclaimed. Then, citing a nationalemergency, he suspended theupcoming tribal elections.

Jace Weaver, Writer: When John Ross cancels elections,now there’s a real block to JohnRidge ever assuming what he knowsto be his rightful position. Hesees John Ross as a dictator. Andhe grows to hate the man in a veryvisceral way.

Narrator: The United States and Georgiagot the scent of blood, and dugdeep at the rift that hadopened between Chief Ross andthe Ridges.Federal agents kept closecontact with members of theRidge faction, and let it beknown among all Cherokees.Ross’s allies fanned rumorsthat the Ridges were illegallynegotiating away Cherokee land.And reminded the Ridge Partythat the penalty for sellingland without the consent of thetribe...was death.By the time the tribal leadersgathered for an emergency sessionat the Red Clay Council Grounds inthe summer of 1834, John Ross hadtaken aim at his old friend, MajorRidge.

John Ross: My fellow countrymen. The matterbefore us is most urgent.If the United States shall withdrawtheir solemn pledges of protection...deprive us of the right of self-government, and wrest from us ourland, then, in deep anguish of ourmisfortunes, we may justly say thereis no place for us...No confidence left that the UnitedStates shall be more just andfaithful towards us in the barrenprairies of the west, than when weoccupied the soil inherited fromthe Great Author of our existence.

Crowd: (in English and Cherokee, no subtitle) “No treaty for land! No one can give away our lands!”

Major Ridge: (in Cherokee)My people, my people.

Crowd: (in English and Cherokee, no subtitle)“No treaty for land!”

Major Ridge: (in Cherokee)We have no government.It is entirely suppressed.

Crowd: (in Cherokee, no subtitle)“The betrayers should be gottenrid of!”

Major Ridge: (in Cherokee)Where are our laws!

Crowd: (in Cherokee)You are lying to us!

Major Ridge: (in Cherokee)The seats of our judges are overturned.

Crowd: (in Cherokee)It is your fault this is happening!

Major Ridge: (in Cherokee)When I look upon you all, I seeyou laugh at me. Harsh words areuttered by men who know better.

John Ridge: (in English)My father has with distinguishedzeal and ability served hiscountry. Is a man to be denounced for hisopinions?If a man saw a cloud charged withrain and thunder, and urged thepeople to take care, is that man tobe hated or respected?

Jace Weaver, Writer: There’s a lengthy discussion andits decided to impeach John Ridge,Major Ridge, from the NationalCouncil.Amidst all of this a member of theRidge faction, John Walker, Jr., leaves early.And he is bushwhacked.His body is left out on the road asa signal.

Carey Tilley, Historian: It’s not just rhetoric anymore.People have to fear for theirlives.

Narrator: There was no reconciling afterRed Clay. John Ross insistedthat if the Cherokees held tight,they could outlast the JacksonAdministration: a new Presidentwould surely honor the SupremeCourt decision.The Ridges believed that whatwas left of American tolerancefor Indian people wasevaporating fast. It was timefor the Cherokee leaders totake the best cash offer fromWashington, and get theirpeople to safety west of theMississippi.In the last days of 1835, indefiance of Chief Ross and theNational Council, a self-appointed group of Cherokeeleaders met at the home of Elias Boudinot.In front of them was the newlynegotiated Treaty of NewEchota. In return for cedingall the tribal lands in thesoutheast, the Cherokee Nationwould be paid five milliondollars, providing funds torelocate west of theMississippi and to buildschools, churches and homes intheir new land.The treaty party did not standto benefit financially, butthey knew that would be littlecomfort to their fellowcitizens.

Jace Weaver, Writer: None of them were under anyillusions as to what they weredoing. They knew it was contrary tothe wishes of the majority ofCherokees. They knew that they hadno authority to sign that treaty.They all knew that.

Gayle Ross, Descendant of Chief John Ross: To a large extent they had come tobelieve what they had been tellingthemselves from the time of theWorcester decision. We see. We’rethe ones who know. We’re the oneswho have to take action to protectthese people who don’t understand.It must have been a very heavy loadknowing that the vast majority ofCherokee people would see them astraitors and worthy of the deathpenalty.

Major Ridge: (in Cherokee)Here is where we were placed to watch over the land, here where I was born and raised. We have to let go of this land that we hold so dear. Here where we grew up, where we worked, and where we have our cherished memories. I would willingly lie down and die if I could stop the removal. There is only one thing I see we can do.

Narrator: Soon after the Treaty of NewEchota was ratified in theUnited States Senate — by amargin of just one vote — Major Ridge and his son Johnleft their homes and moved tothe land west of theMississippi to establish a newCherokee Nation.The Ridges were going the wayof other tribes around them — the Creeks, the Choctaws, andthe Chickasaws. But less thantwo thousand of the 18,000Cherokee citizens joined theRidges in their journey west.

Carey Tilley, Historian: The people are told they had twoyears to remove themselvespeacefully, with support from thefederal government — supply ‘emand make sure that they get theirpayment. And uh only a handful ofpeople leave. They continueplanting their fields and makingimprovements on their farms. Thatwas their land. They weren’t gonnaleave.

Chad Smith, Principal Chief, Cherokee Nation: For the vast majority of the Cherokee people removal was not anoption. It just was not. Theycouldn’t comprehend removal. Theycouldn’t comprehend that a handfulof people signing a piece of paperwould be enough to remove them fromtheir homelands.

Jace Weaver, Writer: John Ross is trying to hold theNation together, to keep it inplace. He’s desperately seeking away, any possible way, that theCherokees can remain in the east.

John Ross: (Greeting in Cherokee)I need your help. A paper will comesoon. Please sign it. You can trustme to fight this.

Narrator: The Cherokee Chief knew he wasworking against time. Deadlinefor removal was May 1838, andseven-thousand federal troopshad ringed Cherokee Territory.White settlers began to closethe circle, “like vultures,”said one federal officer,“ready to strip” the Cherokees“of everything they have.”Still John Ross had faith inthe common decency of whiteAmericans; he thought theRidges’ narrowly ratifiedtreaty could be overturned — and he took one last shot:authoring a bold statement fromthe Cherokee Nation — in theform of a written petition — to be laid before the UnitedStates Senate: “We acknowledgeour own feebleness” theCherokees said, “our onlyfortress is the justice of ourcause. Our only appeal on earthis to your tribunal.”The petition arrived at Ross’shotel in Washington just weeksbefore the removal deadline; ithad been signed by 15,665people: virtually everyCherokee in the East.

Chad Smith, Principal Chief, Cherokee Nation: There were some sheets that wereblue; some were white; some werealmost orange; some were long; somewere wide. And they sewed those alltogether in a scroll. And if youlaid those out that’d be over ahundred and sixty feet long.And John Ross had prepared for oneof the Cherokee’s friends in theSenate to place that upon the tablein the Senate — that protest — sothey would reconsider the executionof that treaty. And before thatSenator could present it aCongressman from Kentucky and onefrom Maine had a duel. Then onekilled the other. And Congressadjourned.

Narrator: While a frustrated John Rosswaited out the Congressionalrecess that followed thekilling, he wrote home to hissister-in-law: “as soon as theybury their illustrious brother,Congress can get back to thebusiness of dealing with ussavages.”Congress, however, did notcircle back to Chief Ross’spetition; it was simply pushedaside. The Cherokee people’snear-unanimous plea neverreceived the consideration ofthe United States Senate.On the morning of May 26, 1838 — three days after the removaldeadline — federal troops andstate militia began what theycalled the “assembly” of theCherokee people.

Thomas N. Belt, Cherokee Language Instructor: Everything that wasn't actually onthe person, now belonged to thestate. And they were forced outinto yards and onto the road withwhatever they had on their back.

Militia Man: C’mon Reverend. Get ‘em movin!

Gayle Ross, Descendant of Chief John Ross: There were staging areas around theCherokee Nation with wooden stockades, and the people were herdedinto what were literally cattle pens.

Narrator: A few weeks after the roundupbegan, the first detachments ofCherokees were shipped west under military guard. Word quickly got back to the stockades: drought andsummer disease had made thetrip a march of death. ChiefRoss was frantic to avoidfurther loss. He convinced U.S.military officials to let himtake over the organization andsupply of removal, and to lethis people sit tight until fall— after the season of diseasehad passed.A few hundred Cherokees whoagreed to renounce tribalcitizenship were allowed toremain on their farms in NorthCarolina.The rest, more than 12,000captive Cherokees, waited inthe fetid stockades... “Prisoners,” one missionaryremembered, “were obliged tolie at night on the nakedground, in the open air,exposed to wind and rain, andin this way, many are hasteningto a premature grave. Half theinfants and all the aged havedied directly, and one fourthof the remainder.”Through June, July, August andSeptember they waited...until...at the beginning ofOctober...the CherokeeNation was finally pushed west.It was early December beforethe final group began the 850-mile trip. By then, the longline of Cherokee travelersstretched from Illinois intoKentucky — unbroken in placesfor three miles. John Ross hadseen that the detachments werewell supplied for the three-to-four-month trek...butwinter storms made theMississippi and Ohio Riversimpassable, stranding thousandsfor a full month.

Gayle Ross, Descendant of Chief John Ross: No one could have predicted thatone of the hardest winters inmemory would strike that year.When they reached theMississippi River, the river wasfrozen. There were three differentdetachments trapped between theMississippi and another river frozenbehind them. And there they satfor weeks in deep, deep snow and ice.

Carey Tilley, Historian: As long as they were moving maybeit wasn't so bad. But when youactually had to wait for the iceand sit there and maybe you'resleeping on snow but you'reprobably sleeping on melted mud andyou're sick, your baby's sick; yourgrandmother's sick; and there'snothing you can do about it.

Narrator: The harsh weather so slowedprogress that supplies of driedcorn and salt pork began to runshort; when white settlersalong the road recognized theCherokees’ need, a few offeredhelp. Others took theopportunity to cash in on thewoe, charging wildly inflatedprices for grain.Cherokee men were soon toodepleted to hunt wild game. A NewEnglander passing throughwestern Kentucky noted the sadprocession: “Two thousandpeople...sick and feeble,many near death. One woman wascarrying her youngest child,who was dying in her arms...multitudes go on foot — evenaged females were travelingwith heavy burdens attached totheir back — on sometimesfrozen ground...with nocovering for the feet exceptwhat nature had given them. TheIndians buried fourteen orfifteen at every stoppingplace.”

Jace Weaver, Writer: Because of the civilization project,a great many of those coming on theTrail were Christians, and a lot oftimes on the Trail they would singChristian hymns. Here these thousandsof people making this forcedmarch, one quarter of them dying en route. And they're singing “Guide Me Oh Thou Great Jehovah. Guide me God, pilgrim that I amin this barren land. I am weak andyou are mighty. Guide us.”

Russell G. Townsend, Historic Preservationist: The United States gained a lot ofland and, and farms and taverns andferries and things like that. But aloss for the American government isthe blemish, the stain it placesupon our national honor. What wedid in the 1830s to thesoutheastern Indians, it’s, it’sethnic cleansing.

Thomas N. Belt, Cherokee Language Instructor: The removal had caused the deathsof some four thousand people.Someone had to answer for thoselives. A life taken in that waymust be balanced out.

Russell G. Townsend, Historic Preservationist: It was law. Their lives wereforfeit.

Susannah Ridge: (in Cherokee)Skah-tle-loh-skee! No!

Sarah Ridge: Please stop! John! No! No...

Jace Weaver, Writer: They stabbed him repeatedly.

John Ross, Descendant: The same morning, four men came toElias Boudinot and asked formedicine. And as he turned to greetthe people he was stabbed. And anotherused a hatchet to the head.Major Ridge was shot five times andhe was killed.Three murders in the same day.Three outstanding people. TheCherokee people, we lost them,

brilliant minds that day. And I think it was a loss for the whole Nation.

Narrator: There was no easy balm for thewounds caused by removal; angrytalk, bitter accusation andviolent reprisal flared amongthe Cherokees for the nextthirty years.It fell to John Ross, whoretained the office ofprincipal chief, to heal hisNation...to realize the dream he andRidges had always shared: thecontinuation of a strong andsovereign Cherokee Nation.By 1860 — after a quarter century at remove from theUnited States — Ross hadmanaged to restore the heart ofhis Nation; its government hadbeen re-constituted; itsbusinesses flourished; it hadthe finest system of publiceducation in all America, formen and women.Cherokee population had nearlydoubled to 21,000. Ancienttribal traditions like theGreen Corn Dance and the clansystem were still honored.John Ross was in his 70s, hadbeen chief nearly forty years, when, after the Civil War, theUnited States began to forceits way, once again, intoCherokee territory...demanding the tribe cede partof its western lands.In the summer of 1866, while hewas in Washington negotiatinganew with the U.S., John Rossfell ill.As he neared death, Ross knewthe Cherokee Nation faced bigchallenges in the coming years — and new kinds ofencroachments — but the Chieftook comfort in the fact that the

Cherokees had re-established themselves as a strong and sovereign nation, deeply connected to the land on which they lived...And prepared to fight for it.

Jace Weaver, Writer: In this one respect they're luckyin that where they came to lookskind of like where they left. Theylook at the hills and they say,“Those look like the hills in oldCherokee country. They must havebeen carved out by the same buzzardthat carved out the Smokies. Andthey look at the scratches in therock and they say, “Those were justlike the scratches in the rock madeby the Uktena back in Georgia. Theymust have been made by the Uktenahere, too.”Part-Cherokee writer, ScottMomaday, talks about stories in theblood, or memory in the blood.Stories are told generation aftergeneration so that in many ways they are carried in our blood.And although I don’t know what itwas like to make that march, myancestors did come on the trail.I’ve heard the stories.

Gayle Ross, Descendant of Chief John Ross: In listening to the stories of yourancestors you're, you’re taught whoyou are and what, what your ancestorssacrificed so that you could be Cherokee.

Geronimo

Narrator: In 1886, in the blazing summer heat, 39 Apaches raced across the desert southwest, chased by five thousand American soldiers. They were the only Indian people in the entire nation still fighting the U.S. Army. For many months, the handful of men, women and children, evaded capture — running, running, then running some more, as much as 80 miles a day. Across the nation, Americans were horrified by details of the chase — some real, many exaggerated. Thirty-nine people were on the run that summer, but the soldiers were really after only one man. To his hunters he was a vicious killer, capable of murdering without mercy. To the Apaches he was more complex — courageous yet vengeful, an unyielding protector of his family’s freedom, yet the cause of his people’s greatest suffering. In the course of the chase and in the years that followed, he would become a legend and the symbol of the untamed freedom of the American West. His name was Geronimo.

Animation: Long ago Coyote opened a bag of darkness and it spread over the world. Creatures of the night loved it. But birds and little animals longed for day. The little animals played a game to win back the light. They won, but one night monster remained. After the game, the first human, White Painted Woman, gave birth to a son. She hid him from the monster. When the boy was grown, he faced the monster and killed it. He was then called Apache — all Chiricahuas are named after him.

Narrator: Geronimo was born sometime in the 1820s at the headwaters of the Gila River along the border of what became Arizona and New Mexico.

Jennie Henry, Cibecue Apache: (in Apache) His name is Goyaalé. We also call him Geronimo. He might have had other names too. A long time ago people used many names.

Narrator: As young as age six Geronimo learned to hunt — he would have spent hours crawling along the ground sneaking up on prey, catching birds with his bare hands. When he made his first kill he swallowed the animal’s heart raw and whole to insure a life of success on the chase.

Oliver Enjady, Chiricahua Apace: Young kids grow up dodging arrows, dodging rocks. They were taught to use the bow and arrow very early. They were taught to run and run and run as young ones. And then as they grew older, they depended on this.

Narrator: “No one is your friend,” Geronimo was told, but your legs, your legs are your friends.

Tim Harjo, Chiricahua Apache: There was always danger. There was always that fear, that just around the corner somebody would be coming across it to take your life. 

Narrator: Surrounded by their traditional enemies — the Utes, the Comanches, the Navajos — the Apaches numbered just 8,000 people, split into many tribes.

Michael Darrow, Fort Sill Tribal Historian: A lot of people think that Apaches are just one tribe but they are a group of nations, a separate people with their own history and their own culture and their own territory. The Chiricahua Apaches, which are my people and we had four different groups, four bands within that tribe. We had the Chihenne, who are the Warm Springs Apaches. We had the Chokonen, who lived around the Chiricahua Mountains.  There were the Nednai, the band that lived mostly in Mexico.

Narrator: Geronimo belonged to the smallest band within the Chiricahua tribe. The Bedonkohe. As a teenager he joined older Bedonkohe men on raiding trips. The raids were lightning quick attacks. Apaches seized the horses and provisions they wanted, before melting into the surrounding country.

David Roberts, Writer: There’s no getting around the fact that Apache life was built around raiding. They, they didn’t raise horses, they stole horses.

Andres Resendez, Historian: Raiding was a very good way to obtain horses, to obtain cattle, to obtain captives, and there were markets for all of these ‘commodities’.

L.G. Moses, Historian: It was common for the Chiricahua for example, to raid one settlement and trade in another. This had been going on for a great many years.

David Roberts, Writer: It wasn’t considered by the Apache a crime. You took what you needed and too bad if the people who owned it got upset.

Silas Cochise, Chiricahua Apache: People looked at the needs of their people, their group of people, and said: Hey, we, we need food. We need ammunition. We need some cattle. And so the raids were planned.

Narrator: Raiding had been a way of life for the Apaches and their Indian neighbors for generations, but Mexicans living on or near Apache land, found it intolerable. In response to the constant theft of property, the Mexican government passed laws offering cash payments for Apache scalps. Soon, bounty hunters were roaming the desert, killing any Indian they could find.

Ramon Riley, White Mountain Apache: (in Apache) Each time the scalp hunters killed an Apache they were paid. A child’s scalp was worth $25. A woman’s scalp was $50. A warrior’s scalp was worth $100.

Narrator: In spite of the bounty hunters, the Apaches continued raiding. By the time he was seventeen Geronimo had successfully completed four raiding expeditions. Now in the eyes of the Bedonkohe he was a man — old enough to join the hunt — and choose a wife. He fell hard for a slender, young girl named Alope.

David Roberts, Writer: I think Alope was, to use a kind of corny Americanism, the love of his life. Geronimo went to Alope’s father to ask for her hand in marriage and the old man said, “It’s going to cost you a lot of horses.” And I think it’s dad saying, “She’s too good for you.”

Narrator: Geronimo disappeared. When he returned several days later he led a long string of horses. “This,” Geronimo later explained, “was all the marriage ceremony necessary in our tribe.” Within a few years Alope and Geronimo had three children. As their young ones grew, the couple celebrated each stage of their lives with age-old rituals.

Elbys Hugar, Chiricahua Apache: When the baby is born, there’s a small ceremony for the cradle. And then later on, when they start walking, there’s another small ceremony for that.

Narrator: Like most Apache women, Alope pierced her babies’ ears to make her children grow faster and bathed them in waters steeped with wildflowers to make their skin strong. And just as their parents had done, Alope and Geronimo taught their children to sing prayers to Ussen, the Creator, for health, strength and wisdom. One day in the early 1850s, Geronimo and his family joined other Chiricahuas on a trading trip. The group camped on the outskirts of a Mexican town called Janos and the men headed in to trade. On the way back the Chiricahuas met distraught members of their band. Mexican soldiers had ransacked their camp, the women cried, stealing their ponies and supplies, leaving their wickiups in ruins. The Apaches scattered. That night Geronimo slipped back in to camp. There he discovered the bodies of his mother, his wife and his three small children, lying in pools of blood.

Zelda Yazza, Chiricahua Apache: When he saw all his family massacred there. And he cut his hair, and he left his hair there with them. You see all the pictures that were taken. You see their hair short, like mine. That was a sign of mourning, that they lost someone.

Narrator: When Geronimo returned home he ripped down his wife’s paintings, tore apart strings of beads she had made and gathered his children’s toys. And just as Apaches had done for generations when loved ones died, he set everything his wife and children had owned on fire.

Silas Cochise, Chiricahua Apache: Geronimo’s attitude changed after his mother was killed, after his wife was killed, after his children was killed. And so that created an attitude towards the non-Indians.

Robert Geronimo, Geronimo’s Great Grandson: It just changed him completely and totally.

Silas Cochise, Chiricahua Apache: Maybe it wasn’t — it wasn’t a wise thing to deal with things like that, but he wanted revenge.

Vernon Simmons, Chiricahua Apache: Your wife’s dead, your kids are dead, your mother’s dead. That’s your life, taken away from you in an instant. It– [it’d] want to make you go kill everybody.

Narrator: “I had no purpose left…” Geronimo later recalled, “my heart ached for revenge.”

Animation: Power is everywhere, it lives in everything. It might be known through a word, or come in the shape of an animal. We all have Power, but some tap into different rooms. Power speaks to those who listen.

Elbys Hugar, Chiricahua Apache: The greatest thing a person can have is the power. [Benegotsi] It’s scary. (in Apache) This is the truth. To live with Power is very challenging. It’s so potent you must be wary. To have Power is a great responsibility. Benegotsi. You can choose to leave it alone or accept it. It’s up to you.

Narrator: Not long after the vicious murder of his family, a despondent Geronimo ventured deep into Chiricahua country. Alone, he buried his head in his hands and began to cry. Suddenly he was startled by a voice. “No gun will ever kill you,” it said. “I will take the bullets from the guns of the Mexicans…and I will guide your arrows.” Geronimo later said that he had been given what Apache people call Power, a gift from Ussen.

Robert Haozous, Chiricahua Apache: The concept of power is fundamental in Apache belief.  Everybody acknowledges that somebody has a certain power, like the power of medicine, the power of healing, the power of seeing or feeling something at a distance.

Oliver Enjady, Chiricahua Apache: There were people that knew where you were, people that knew about horses, people that knew about hunting. We call this power.

Ramon Riley, White Mountain Apache: (In Apache) Geronimo had “N’daa K’eh Godih”, a prayer power that worked on the minds of his enemies to make their bullets miss their targets and turn into water. Geronimo had this power and it helped him survive.

Narrator: Soon after the voice spoke to him, Geronimo put his power into action. He got permission from the Chiricahua chiefs to take revenge for the massacre at Janos. With a force of 200 men, he lured the Mexican soldiers who had killed his family, into battle. Leading the charge through a hail of bullets, Geronimo whirled and dodged, killing with his knife when his arrows ran out.

David Roberts, Writer: He’s dashing back and forth, running this zigzag pattern, and obviously scaring the daylights out of the Mexicans. They had never run into an antagonist quite like this guy.

Vernon Simmons, Chiricahua Apache: I don’t care what you put up against him. He’ll come after you. That’s the kind of fighter he was. He was a true blooded Chiricahua fighter. And he said he didn’t — “He wasn’t scared of bullets.” That, I heard from my grandpa.

Narrator: Geronimo and his men decimated the enemy. From that day forward, Mexicans would shudder at his name, while the Chiricahuas would accord him great respect. As a sign of his status, over the years he would take many wives, including the daughter of the greatest Chiricahua chief, Cochise. Yet Geronimo would never be a chief himself. For the Apaches, he was too impulsive, too fretful, too vengeful.

Michael Darrow, Fort Sill Tribal Historian: We had many people in our tribe who had the characteristics that would appropriate for being a chief, who were well respected and who were known for making careful decisions that were appropriate for the well being of the people. And Geronimo was not among those.

Narrator: For the ten years after his celebrated victory, Geronimo fought one bloody battle after another with Mexicans. In all that time he was completely unknown to Americans. His first encounter with them was friendly. A handful of land surveyors came through Apache country and Geronimo traded ponies, skins and blankets with them for clothing and food. “They were good men,” he remembered, “and we were sorry they had gone on into the west…they were the first white men I ever saw.”

David Roberts, Writer: He may wonder — this is a whole different species of person from the Mexicans, who have raided and killed and enslaved us for maybe a century. Maybe we have something to hope from these “white eyes,”  

Narrator: The Apaches didn’t know it at the time, but the men who traded with Geronimo had been sent to mark a new international boundary. At the end of the Mexican American War in 1848, the United States had wrested huge swaths of territory from Mexico, including large areas of Apache land. The surveyors were followed in the 1850s by thousands of other Americans, as fortune hunters streamed through Chiricahua country on the way to California gold. The Apaches debated how to respond to the new comers. They looked to the one leader who could speak for all the Chiricahua bands, Geronimo’s father-in-law Cochise.

Tim Harjo, Chiricahua Apache: Cochise was probably the greatest warrior and chief that the Chiricahuas had ever had. I think even to this very day that name is spoken with great reverence.

Colin Calloway, Historian: Cochise is one of those people who earns a reputation, not only as a warrior, but as a statesman, if you like, as a diplomat.

Narrator: The Americans, Cochise believed, were an irritant, not a threat.He negotiated a deal allowing travelers, goods and mail to pass through his people’s land.But when Spanish gold mines were re-discovered in the Southwest, American prospectors came to stay.

L.G. Moses, Historian: The miners that descend on Arizona are mostly a lawless bunch of people.

R. David Edmunds, Historian: Mining camps are full of young men who are almost completely beyond any social bounds. They are one of the worst places in the American West they are absolutely full of racism. Miners are disastrous for most Native American people.

Narrator: Some miners were barbarous — poisoning the Apaches’ food with strychnine, cutting fetuses out of the bellies of pregnant women, selling Apache girls into slavery.When Americans decapitated a venerated Apache chief and sent his boiled skull back East as a gruesome trophy, they pushed Cochise too far.

Silas Cochise, Chiricahua Apache: He believed in punishing someone that was wrong, and in punishing people that were responsible for...his people dying or getting hurt. He wasn’t going to let anybody take advantage of him or his people.

Narrator: Cochise urged Geronimo and the Chiricahuas to take revenge. “All of the Indians agreed not to be friendly with the white man anymore,” Geronimo later said. “Sometimes we attacked the white men — sometimes they attacked us.” The Chiricahuas ambushed stagecoaches and wagon trains, mutilating their victims — smashing heads with rocks, stabbing corpses with their spears, dangling bodies over fires.

Oliver Enjady, Chiricahua Apache: What happened back then, happened because they were humans. It was done to them, so they did it back. But better.

Narrator: In his forties now, Geronimo’s face showed the ravages of war.

David Roberts, Historian: The scars from bullets across his cheek...one journalist spoke of how one of those injuries had caused him to seem to have a perpetual sneer, a sneer of hatred, a sneer of contempt.

Keith Basso, Anthropologist: The man had a very impressive face. Extremely handsome in his way. In Apache one would say “hashke”. There is a measure of meanness and anger in the face.

Narrator: Through the 1860s as the war with the Apaches raged, the growing population of white settles became increasingly angry that the government was not protecting them. In the frontier town of Tucson, to the East of Chiricahua territory, newspapers called for retribution. While “utter extermination” might not be considered practical, one columnist wrote, “sound whippings” of Apaches should be encouraged. “We must stand by our race for blood is thicker than water,” declared another. “Let slip the dogs of war in good earnest upon all Indians.” News of the escalating violence shook Washington. To bring order to the Southwest, President Ulysses S. Grant sent his most respected Indian fighter to Arizona. A veteran of the Civil War, General George Crook had been fighting Indians ever since. Though he would prove ruthless in his pursuit of the Apache, Crook had an unusual empathy for Indians.

Michael Darrow, Fort Sill Tribal Historian: General Crook, from the perspective of our own tribe, was one of the generals who tried hardest to understanding things from an Apache’s perspective, and it was something that our people at that time greatly appreciated that there was somebody who would actually talk with them.

Keith Basso, Anthropologist: Crook was forever talking about how intelligent Apaches were. He was a firm believer that with proper forms of formal education, Apache people could quickly become “civilized” quote, unquote, and become upstanding members of society.

Narrator: Crook was charged with implementing a new federal Indian policy. Instead of treating Native tribes as sovereign nations, as the U.S. had been doing for more than a century, Indians would now be wards of the state. Over the next decade, the American army would force tribe after tribe onto reservations.

Philip J. Deloria, Historian: The reservation becomes this dominant way of containing Indian people. This place where Indian people can be containedand then worked on, right, transformed and changed so that they can have a future within American society.

Keith Basso, Anthropologist: Crook’s strategy was as simple as it was difficult to enforce.His basic idea was, that if Apache people would stay on their reservations, he would do everything he could to make their lives comfortable. But those who refused and who would continue raiding he vowed to hunt down to the very last man.

Narrator: Ten years earlier the Apaches’s neighbors, the Navajos, had faced a similar choice — comply with the American demands or fight. The Navajos chose war. After a brutal military campaign, the American Army forced them into submission. Survivors were marched off their ancestral land to a distant reservation; along the way hundreds died of starvation and disease. Apaches knew this history well.

Tim Harjo, Chiricahua Apache: The Navajo people and Apache people knew one another, they shared information. There was a whole network of information exchange between the tribes in the area.

Narrator: Many Apaches reluctantly agreed to settle on reservations. Crook played Apaches against each other. He offered them incentives to become scouts for the U.S. army and lead the hunt for Apaches who refused to give in.

Ramon Riley, White Mountain Apache: (in Apache)When the soldiers came here, they took away our rifles and our horses and our way of life.If you became a scout your horse was returned to you. The money you get paid, white people’s money, could buy a lot of supplies for your family.I wonder what I would have done, where would I be?

Narrator: For several years as one by one Apache chiefs agreed to reservation life, Cochise and the Chiricahuas continued to fight. But the time came when the great Chiricahua leader realized his people could not resist forever.

David Roberts, Writer: Cochise recognized that the Anglo-Americans were a more formidable foe than the Mexicans. They had better technology, their army was far more efficient and he sensed that there was too many of them, there were so many people compared to his people.

Narrator: After a decade of war, Cochise agreed to halt the killing and to end Apache raids north of the Mexican border. In return, the Americans would create a reservation for the Chiricahua on their ancestral homeland — a pristine wilderness of mountains, canyons, streams and open fields — prime land in the eyes of the settlers.

Michael Darrow, Fort Sill Tribal Historian: The United States told them well all you have to do is stay in this one spot.That was the arrangement they made in order to stay on their own land.

Narrator: With minimal interference from the U.S., the Chiricahuas lived much as they had for generations, raiding into Mexico whenever they needed horses and supplies.But just two years later, Cochise died, and the deal he had struck with the Americans was put at risk.

David Roberts, Writer: Cochise’s death was, an irreplaceable loss. No one would ever take his place, no one would ever unite the various bands of Chiricahua the way Cochise succeeded in doing.

Tim Harjo, Chiricahua Apache: The death of Cochise brought out what the Americans thought was an opportunity to open up that area of land for mining and settlement, and that without leaders such as Cochise they would be much easier to eventually conquer.

Narrator: With Cochise gone, the federal government decided to move the Chiricahua 150 miles north to a mosquito-ridden reservation called San Carlos. This would open the valuable Chiricahua land for American settlement and appease the Mexicans who were fed up with Apache raiding. A young reservation agent, named John Clum, was sent from San Carlos to deliver the news. Reluctantly the Chiricahuas agreed to move. Clum’s final meeting was with Geronimo’s brother-in-law, Chief Juh.  Juh stuttered, so Geronimo spoke for him. We will move to San Carlos, Geronimo told Clum. Just give us a little time. That night, after strangling their own dogs so the barking would not give them away, Geronimo, Juh and some 700 Chiricahuas slipped away. Clum was furious. Blaming Geronimo, not Juh, he became obsessed with capturing the Indian he believed responsible for the double cross. On April 21st, 1877 Geronimo rode into Clum’s carefully laid trap. As he arrived at Ojo Caliente, New Mexico to trade some horses dozens of Apache scouts — including Cochise’s son Naiche — surrounded him. They carted him back to San Carlos in chains.

David Roberts, Writer: He thought he was going to die, he thought he would be executed.

L.G. Moses, Historian: He understands that he may not die in battle, something that his power tells him “this will never happen.” But it didn’t say much about him dying at the end of a hangman’s rope.

Narrator: Clum threw Geronimo into the San Carlos guardhouse, confident that he would soon be hanged. But Clum was unexpectedly relieved of his command. The new reservation agent saw no need to keep Geronimo locked up. After four months, he was released from the guardhouse. But he was hardly free. Soldiers treated him like any Apache on the reservation.They took away his gun, made him wear an identification tag, forced him to attend a daily head count and demanded he obtain an official pass to go anywhere, even to hunt for food. They ordered him to plant vegetables and dig ditches.

Michael Darrow, Fort Sill Tribal Historian: It was too hot and too rocky and too thorny. If there was any good land, it probably belonged to somebody else.

Zelda Yazza, Chiricahua Apache: There was nothing there. They didn’t like it at all.

Oliver Enjady, Chiricahua Apache: Not even the dogs like it there.

Tim Harjo, Chiricahua Apache: To top it off, they were expected to become farmers. Not only are we not farmers, but there’s nothing to farm. 

Narrator: For four years Geronimo struggled with life on the reservation. Then in the summer of 1881, he was drawn to the startling message of a charismatic Apache medicine man, called the Dreamer. A former military scout, well versed in American ways, he urged a return to traditional Apache life. Apaches came from miles around to attend his ceremony. The Dreamer marked East, South, West and North with sacred cattail pollen. People circled around him as he preached. Apaches should not take revenge against the white man, the Dreamer said. Ussen would see that the Americans suffered for their sins in the afterlife. It was a plea for unity and peace for a people who had seen little of either.

Jennie Henry, Cibecue Apache: (in Apache) Those Apaches with the power to unite people and instill vision have always been labeled by whites as a threat. My grandmother said she saw this man and he was not a troublemaker.

Narrator: Reservation officials feared that the medicine man might incite a revolt and sent eighty-five soldiers and twenty-three Apache scouts to arrest or kill him. When the soldiers seized the Dreamer, a group of angry Apaches surrounded them. Suddenly a fire-fight erupted.Within moments the Dreamer had been wounded.Enraged by an attack on a peaceful medicine man, Apache scouts turned their guns on the soldiers. When the shooting was over, seven cavalrymen, seventeen Apaches, and the Dreamer, were dead.

Jennie Henry, Cibecue Apache: (in Apache) He wasn’t killed by a bullet. He was beheaded.

Narrator: The Americans limped back to their fort. The scouts who had mutinied were arrested, and several hanged. News of the battle shot across the country. The New York Times claimed that Apaches in Arizona had carried out a massacre as horrible as Custer’s last stand. Anxious officials called for reinforcements from New Mexico and California. Soon, San Carlos was swarming with US soldiers. No one felt more endangered than Geronimo.

Tim Harjo, Chiricahua Apache: It didn’t make sense to stay in an area with a large group of soldiers who, you knew, had a history of them trying to kill you.

Narrator: On September 30, 1881, accompanied by Juh and seventy-two Chiracahuas, Geronimo escaped from San Carlos, and headed south. It was the beginning of five years of bloody Chiricahua resistance, the last Indian war ever fought on United States soil and the transformation of Geronimo into a legend. Geronimo raced towards the relative safety of Mexico. When he passed near the frontier town of Tombstone, terrified businessmen demanded protection. The town’s newly elected mayor was John Clum, the former San Carlos reservation agent. He relished the opportunity of a second chance at his nemesis. He rounded up a posse, including a former sheriff made famous by a recent gun fight in Tombstone, Wyatt Earp. “If we get Geronimo this time,” Clum declared, “we’ll send him back to the army, nailed up in a long, narrow box, with a paper lily on his chest.” For two days the posse pursued Geronimo, but never even caught a glimpse of him. Geronimo headed for the one place Chiricahuas felt safe, a part of Apache territory high in the Sierra Madre that no outsiders had ever penetrated. The Americans called it the Apache Stronghold, but it was much more than that.

Tim Harjo, Chiricahua Apache: What you’re really talking about is a whole territory of land or place that a group of people call home, you know, stretched for hundreds and hundreds of miles.

Narrator: There Geronimo joined the greatest Apache force assembled since the days of Cochise. They were the only Indians in the entire nation still fighting the American army. In the past two decades, one Indian tribe after the next had been defeated. The Kiowa, the Comanche, the Cheyenne had been forced onto reservations. The Lakota had surrendered. Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce had agreed to terms. Only the Chiricahuas were still free. They celebrated with a dance. 

Oliver Enjady, Chiricahua Apache: Everything that an Apache does is sacred. Even the dancing.

David Roberts, Writer: They feel a power and invincibility, they say, “Well, maybe we have to give up Arizona and New Mexico, maybe we can’t live any more north of the border, but we can live forever here.”

Narrator: For several months Geronimo and the Chiricahuas enjoyed a return to their traditional life.The men hunted and raided; the women gathered mescal, dried beef and made clothes from plundered Mexican cloth.But Geronimo couldn’t stop worrying.He knew that it was becoming increasingly risky to raid local villages and Mexican troops were gathering in the mountains. And he understood that as long as they lived off the reservation, the American army would be after them too.They needed more people. To get them, Geronimo posed an audacious and controversial plan. In a heated debate, he argued they should return to San Carlos, abduct their own people — 400 Chiricahuas under Chief Loco — and force them to join the resistance.

David Roberts, Writer: Geronimo was a brilliant manipulator. He was able to talk people into things that their better judgment told them would not work.

Michael Darrow, Fort Sill Tribal Historian: Geronimo was said to be a good talker. That seems to be one of his primary characteristics.

Silas Cochise, Chiricahua Apache: Geronimo was a person that came to some conclusion and he wanted to do something about it right then, no matter what the situation was, no matter what the cost was.

Narrator: At dawn on April 19, 1882, Geronimo and a group of armed Chiricahuas slipped onto San Carlos reservation. They confronted Loco with guns drawn. “Take them all,” one of Geronimo’s men shouted. “Shoot down anyone who refuses to come with us!”

Silas Chochise, Chiricahua Apache: Loco didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay. He wanted to settle down.A lot of these small group leaders wanted to settle down.

Voice of Anita Lester, Chiricahua Apache: ...seems like the other leaders were trying to make peace for their women and children.

Narrator: Loco and his band were forced on a harrowing trip to the Stronghold. Within sight of the Sierra Madre, they rode into a Mexican ambush. Geronimo’s hostages were unarmed and whole families were slaughtered on the spot. Seventy eight Apaches, mostly women and children, were killed. Many of the survivors blamed Geronimo. “We were filled with gloom and despair,” one of them recalled, “What had we done to be treated so cruelly by our own race.”

L.G. Moses, Historian: Geronimo’s unwillingness to consider the wishes of Loco and his people, it points to a certain selfishness on his part.

David Roberts, Writer: Cochise would not have done the same thing. Cochise respected the idea that Loco could have chosen for himself.

Narrator: Geronimo saw it differently. He had added more people to the Chiricahua band, the last living free off the reservation. If he had any regrets, he never spoke of them.

Animation: Coyote threw a stone into water. He said, “If this sinks, all that live, will die!” Coyote knew all along that the stone would sink. For he is the trickster! Because of his stone, man must die. All that men do, Coyote did first.

Narrator: One spring night in 1883, US soldiers apprehended a young Apache man slipping onto the San Carlos reservation.His name was Tzoe, but the Americans called him Peaches.They suspected that he might have information that would lead them to Geronimo.They put him in chains, suspended him by his arms and interrogated him. Finally he broke down and told a remarkable story.Although he wasn’t Chiricahua, he said he had been taken by Geronimo with Loco’s band.When the group was ambushed by Mexicans, he lost both his wives. For a year Peaches lived in the Stronghold, but he missed his family.

David Roberts, Writer: Peaches, we must remember, is not a Chiricahua. He is kept under surveillance in the stronghold, because people already think he might be a turncoat.

Jennie Henry, Granddaughter of T’Soe: (in Apache) My grandfather said he lived with fierce people. He had to be extremely careful in front of them because they would retaliate right away.

Narrator: Life in the stronghold, Peaches said, was hard. The Chiricahuas moved every few days, and were low on food. Yearning to see his mother at San Carlos, Peaches slipped away one night, and walked backed to the reservation. It was the break Crook needed: Peaches knew where the Stronghold was and how to get there. He could lead the U.S. army to Geronimo. Six weeks later Geronimo was in Chihuahua, Mexico, when he had a premonition. “Our base camp” he told the other men, “has been invaded by U.S. troops.” They raced back to find that Crook had occupied their camp with several hundred soldiers and Apache scouts. The Stronghold had been breeched. Now there was nowhere for the Chiricahuas to hide.

David Roberts, Writer: It dealt an absolutely shattering psychological blow to Geronimo and the other Chiricahua. They believed we are always safe here in the stronghold. We can always, even if we can never live in, north of the border, we can always come here and flourish.

Narrator: Reluctantly, Geronimo and the band agreed to return to the reservation. For almost two years, it seemed as if peace had come to Arizona. Intent on keeping the Chiricahuas on the reservation for good, General Crook allowed them to decide where they wanted to live. They chose the fertile banks of Turkey Creek a spot resembling the cool mountain pastures of their traditional home. For the first time in years most Chiricahuas felt settled. Not Geronimo. He tried his hand at farming, but didn’t like it and he bridled at being bossed around by young, white officials. Finally, he’d had enough. On May 17, 1885, Geronimo and nearly 150 people fled Turkey Creek, leaving the majority of Chiricahuas on the reservation. U.S. troops followed close behind.

Vernon Simmons, Chiricahua Apache: “We were running all the time,” my grandpa said. Always living one part one night, moving someplace the next time.The Calvary was always chasing us somewhere. We were running, always running.

Narrator: The fleeing Chiricahuas dispersed.Geronimo led a small group of men, women and children.Now in his sixties, he was respected as an elder.Although he was not a chief, his band looked to him for leadership and guidance.  

Tim Harjo, Chiricahua Apache: In times of danger, he was the man to be with.

Robert Geronimo, Geronimo’s Great Grandson: According to my grandmother, they were walking miles and miles and miles.

Silas Cochise, Chiricahua Apache: The men would run and the women would ride the horses and follow. The Chiricahua people they could move 70 miles or 80 miles in one day...where the Calvary that was following them a lot of times couldn’t keep up.

Elbys Hugar, Chiricahua Apahce: They were running from the Calvary. And they ran into these rocks.And they turned themselves into rocks.

L.G. Moses, Historian: Among Geronimo’s powers was the ability to suspend time and space.  On one particular raid, he was actually able to hold off the dawn for a few hours, so they could approach in darkness.

Narrator: The Chiricahuas killed anyone who crossed their path. “If we were seen by a civilian,” one Apache recalled, “it meant that Geronimo would be reported to the military and they would be after us, so there was nothing to do but kill...It was terrible to see little children killed…but the soldiers killed our women and children too.” Once Geronimo feigned friendship with a rancher, asking him to slaughter some sheep and cook them for his men.  After they feasted on mutton, Geronimo shot and stabbed his host and the man’s wife and children.He would have killed the White Mountain Apache family living on the ranch, but members of his band intervened, guns drawn, forcing Geronimo to back down.

Philip J. Deloria, Historian: He was driven, and his people were driven to such a sense of desperation and futility and humiliation that, that striking back in anger could take, you know often times, really quite awfully horrific sorts of forms.You don’t take over a continent, in an easy way and you don’t give up a continent without fighting hard. So there is a long history that everyone understands that that’s what the fight is about.  And that it’s going to be bloody and awful and violent and painful.

Narrator: Most settlers in the Southwest now saw Geronimo as simply a vicious killer. 

Voice of Anita Lester, Chiricahua Apache: Every time someone died or got raided, it was always Chiricahuas. Even if they were far away. And it was because Geronimo was about here and there, bragging and saying things.

Narrator: By early 1886, the years of hiding, raiding and running had taken their toll. Even Geronimo was tired.

David Roberts, Writer: Morale is pretty low. There are too few of them, there’s a sense of doom hovering over the Chiricahua existence.

Narrator: That March, Geronimo arrived at Cañon de los Embudos, south of the Mexican border, to meet with General Crook. Surrounded by two dozen armed Chiricahuas, he sat down to talk about terms for surrender. Beads of sweat rolled down his temples. “There are very few of my men left now,” Geronimo said. “They have done some bad things but I want them all rubbed out and let us never speak of them again.” Crook had orders to demand unconditional surrender from the Chiricahuas, but he knew that Geronimo would never agree. After several days of negotiating, Crook promised that if the Apaches spent two years in an East Coast prison they could return to Arizona. Geronimo and the Chiricahuas finally accepted Crook’s terms. “I give myself up to you,” he said, “Do with me what you please. Once I moved about like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all.” It wasn’t all. 

David Roberts, Writer: Geronimo has one last change of heart, one more vacillation, his always vacillating mind. How does he know this wasn’t another double cross?

Narrator: Two days later, as most of the Chiricahuas headed North with Crook, Geronimo led a group of twenty-one men, fourteen women and six children, mostly members of his family, into the night.

Robert Haozous, Chiricahua Apache: When Geronimo made that final break, it’s hard to understand what was going through his mind, because he knew. He knew what he was facing.

Oliver Enjady, Chiricahua Apache: Maybe they wanted to go back for one more last look, for all that this land has provided them.

David Roberts, Writer: I don’t think he had a coherent plan for a survival strategy that would last for another decade. He was an improviser.

Narrator: Geronimo took his band into New Mexico.“We were reckless for our lives,” he later recalled, “for we felt every man’s hand was against us. If we returned to the reservation we would be put in prison and killed: if we stayed in Mexico they would continue to send soldiers to fight us; so we gave no quarter to anyone and asked no favors.”Word spread across Arizona and New Mexico that Geronimo was on the loose again.Ranchers pleaded with the White House for protection. “We are surrounded by Apaches,” one wrote. “We have many small children and women with us…For the sake of humanity send us some soldiers…”

David Roberts, Writer: The terror, the psychological trauma that Geronimo wrought at the end created this fantasy, the great American western fantasy, I’m surrounded by Indians. They’re going to kill us all.

Narrator: Incensed that Crook had allowed Geronimo to escape, federal officials removed him from his post.His replacement, General Nelson Miles, was a hard-liner with little use for Crook’s Apache scouts. Miles requested thousands reinforcements to bring in the fleeing Chiricahuas.

Silas Cochise, Chiricahua Apache: The Chiricahua were a tricky group of people. Smart, wise decisions were made. The US military hunted for them almost all over Arizona and on into New Mexico, but they were chasing spirits.

David Roberts, Writer: They’re being pursued by five thousand American troops; one quarter of the U.S. army, three thousand Mexican troops, possibly a thousand vigilantes. So you’ve got nine thousand hunters against 39 fugitives and they never succeed in capturing a single man, woman, or child. If that isn’t brilliant, nothing is.

Narrators: Journalists flocked to the Southwest and provided lurid and riveting accounts of the fugitives. 

L.G. Moses, Historian: He had achieved a notoriety that went well beyond the American Southwest.

David Roberts, Writer: That’s when he really becomes the most famous Indian in the West and, in the phrase of the day, the “worst Indian who ever lived,”

Colin Calloway, Historian: Geronimo assumes an important, symbolic status. His resistance is seen as the last resistance, not only of Chiricahua Apache people, but of Indian people in North America.

Narrator: After three months of fruitless searching, Miles was forced to turn to the scouts he disdained. Within weeks, two Chiricahua scouts with family ties to Geronimo, climbed towards his remote mountain camp. Geronimo wanted to kill them, but a member of the band intervened.

Zelda Yazza, Chiricahua Apache: My grandfather drew his gun against Geronimo and told himnot to shoot because they’re family. If Geronimo had his way, those two would have never climbed that hill.

Narrator: “The troops are coming after you from all over the United States,” one of the scouts said. “If you are awake at night and a rock rolls down the mountain or a stick breaks, you will be running…you even eat your meals running. You have no friends whatsoever in the world.” “I live at the agency,” he added. “Nobody bothers me. I sleep well. I have my little patch of corn.” Geronimo finally agreed to meet with an army officer who outlined the terms of surrender.

Silas Cochise, Chiricahua Apache: In spite of the feelings that he Geronimo might have had the wisdom that came with the Chiricahuas was still a part of his life. I think in the end the wisdom took over. And so he negotiated with the Cavalry.

Narrator: Geronimo and his band would be sent to a prison in Florida. The president himself would determine when they could return home.As the negotiations wore on, the Chiricahuas learned that the Americans had decided to deport their entire tribe.Even the scouts, and those living peacefully at Turkey Creek, would be sent to Florida.“My wife and children have been captured,” one of the men said, “I love them. I want to be with them."The Chiricahuas began to surrender, one by one.Geronimo was the last to give in.

Robert Geronimo, Geronimo’s Great Grandson: Family. It’s just – that’s everything, and that’s it. Everything else is secondary.

Michael Darrow, Fort Sill Tribal Historian: The whole of our history is primarily of the parents and the children and the cousins and the aunts and uncles and grandparents and grandchildren. All of that is integral to Apache community, as the Apache existence. And the men didn’t exist in isolation.

Narrator: On September 8th, 1886, Geronimo and his band boarded a train bound for Florida. Like most of the Chiricahuas, Geronimo had never set foot on a train before and had never left the Southwest.

Elbys Hugar, Great Granddaughter of Cochise: I had a grandfather and a grandmother, along with their children, went on this train. It wasn’t their fault.

Silas Cochise, Chiricahua Apache: The Apaches that were on that train felt like it was the end of their time, that the non-Indian was going to wipe them out. This was another trick of the non-Indian world.

Narrator: When they finally arrived, Geronimo’s band was imprisoned alongside Chiricahuas from Turkey Creek and the scouts who had loyally served the U.S. army. The entire Chiricahua tribe now numbered fewer than five hundred, just one quarter of those who had lived free in the days of Cochise. They were all paying a terrible price for Geronimo’s brave but stubborn resistance. Families were separated, the men taken to Fort Pickens, the women and children to Fort Marion, more than three hundred miles away. Almost immediately, the prisoners began dying of malaria and other tropical diseases.

Robert Geronimo, Geronimo’s Great Grandson: The humidity, the heat, even the bugs were different, the mosquitoes and everything else. And it’s just– to them it was miserable.

Narrator: Within three years, 119 people had died, including Geronimo’s wife and four year old daughter.

Oliver Enjady, Chiricahua Apache: When the United States almost put that finaldagger, should I say, into the hearts of our people, almost carried out that manifest destiny, in a land, in a place that was worse than San Carlos.

Narrator: Government authorities took the Chiricahua children to a boarding school in Pennsylvania. School officials cut the children’s hair, forbade them to speak Apache and tried to convert them to Christianity.

Michael Darrow, Fort Sill Tribal Historian: Our people were being told, “Well, that’s all over with. You can’t go back. Don’t clutter their minds with all this old information.”

Robert Haozous, Chiricahua Apache: They taught them how to be western, how to dismiss their religion, [how to] dismiss their power. How to dismiss the power of their elders.

Narrator: Tuberculosis spread through the boarding school. The only children returned to their families were the ones already dying. After less than two years in Florida, all the Chiricahuas were sent to a prison camp in Alabama, then moved again to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. In all, they would spend 27 years as prisoners of war.

Voice of Anita Lester, Chiricahua Apache: What the government did is deplorable. And they should be somehow held accountable.

Narrator: Even when the federal government finally freed the Chiricahuas in 1913, the state of Arizona refused to allow them to return to their homeland.

Michael Darrow, Fort Sill Tribal Historian: Most people in The United States don’t realize that there was an entire tribe of people who were imprisoned not because they’d done anything wrong, but because of who they were.

Narrator: In a few short years, Americans came to view Geronimo in an entirely new way. When he had first arrived in Florida, crowds gathered at the prison to gawk at “the wickedest Indian who ever lived.” Eight years later, as Geronimo was being taken from Alabama to Oklahoma, crowds gathered again. This time they came to cheer a national hero. What had changed was America itself: Geronimo’s surrender had ended the Indians wars that had raged for nearly three centuries.

Philip J. Deloria, Historian: Once that moment is perceived to be over, there’s an almost immediate turn to a kind of nostalgic sensibility. “Boy, you know, those were the days, right, when we faced off against these, you know, these challenging dangerous Indian opponents.  Gosh! I miss those times.”

Narrator: Once the despised savage, Geronimo was now the valiant warrior who had held out against impossible odds.

David Roberts, Writer: By the 20th century, Geronimo comes to stand for some of the values we hold most dear in America. The lone battler,the champion of his people, the guy who never gives up, the ultimate underdog. He becomes an icon, a sentimental icon of what was once a real enemy. And there’s something amazingly American about that transformation.

Narrator: While other Chiracahuas were kept under guard, Geronimo was allowed to travel.  He attended expositions and appeared in Wild West Shows.

Colin Calloway, Historian: Geronimo adopting or seen to adopt American culture represents a major symbolic victory. American civilization has arrived. And even Geronimo is now embracing it.

Narrator: In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt asked Geronimo to lead his inaugural procession. As the eighty year old Apache rode down Pennsylvania Avenue, people threw their hats in the air and shouted, “Hooray for Geronimo!” Several days later Geronimo met with the President and asked if he could be allowed to return to Arizona. “My hands are tied as with a rope,” Geronimo said, “I pray you to cut the ropes and make me free. Let me die in my own country.” “It is best for you to stay where you are,” Roosevelt replied. Resentment still burns in Arizona, he explained, “That is all I can say, Geronimo.” One day in February 1909, the most famous Indian alive, was riding home, when he was thrown from his horse. He lay out in the freezing cold all night. When an old friend found him, Geronimo was gravely ill. He died six days later, still a prisoner of war. Although Americans celebrated him, Geronimo provoked complicated feelings in the hearts of many Apaches. 

Tim Harjo, Chiricahua Apache: We have different perspectives on the person, on the man —who he was, how he lived his life, why he did what he did, and how that affected the rest of the tribe.

Zelda Yazza, Chiricahua Apache: Apache people suffered because of him. We all suffered with him.

Robert Haozous, Chiricahua Apache: Most of the tribe were angry with him. And they blamed him.We don’t look at him as a hero.

Voice of Anita Lester, Chiricahua Apache: He wasn’t alone. And when these white people think about all these things that were going on, they should name all the group that was with him instead of just Geronimo. Because he didn’t do it alone.

Oliver Enjady, Chiricahua Apache: Then there are a lot of other names also, lost in history, lost in the canyons of Mexico, lost in the mountains of the Chiricahuas, names long forgotten.

Narrator: While other Apaches remained in the Southwest, the Chiricahua had paid dearly for Geronimo’s resistance. They were never allowed home.

Elbys Hugar, Chiricahua Apache: Well he killed a lot of people. Why is he remembered when he did all these bad things? It’s because he put a mark on the American people. He put a scar on them.

Narrator: In the end even Geronimo had regrets. On his deathbed, he summoned his nephew to his side, “I should never have surrendered,” the old man whispered. “I should have fought until I was the last man alive.”

Wounded Knee

Narrator: On a cold night in February 1973, a caravan rolled through the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The cars were packed with 200 Indians — men and women, local Oglala Lakota and members of the urban militant group, the American Indian Movement. They headed toward the hallowed ground of Wounded Knee, the site of the last massacre of the Indian Wars.

Carter Camp, Former AIM Leader, Ponca Tribe: Going into Wounded Knee that night when it was dark and scary, we were clinging to our weapons tightly and we knew that a battle was gonna come. And I was sitting there thinking of some of these young men that are around me, am I committing them to-to die?

Madonna Thunder Hawk, Former AIM Member, Two Kettle Lakota: I was ready to do whatever it takes for change. I didn’t care. I had children; and for them I figured I could make a stand here.

Joseph Trimbach, Former FBI Agent: They were up to no good. I mean why would they be traveling in a caravan with all these weapons and all these Molotov cocktails if they weren't going to engage in some kind of destructive activity?

Narrator: By the 1970’s, Native people, once masters of the continent, had become invisible, consigned to the margins of American life. Their anger and frustration would explode in Wounded Knee.

Russel Means, Former AIM Leader, Oglala Lakota Tribe: We were about to be obliterated culturally. Our spiritual way of life — our entire way of life was about to be stamped out and this was a rebirth of our dignity and self-pride.

Narrator: For the next 71 days, Indian protesters at Wounded Knee would hold off the federal government at gunpoint. Media from around the world would give the siege day-by-day coverage. And Native Americans from across the nation would come to Wounded Knee to be part of what they hoped would be a new beginning.

Dennis Banks, Former AIM Leader, Ojibwa Tribe: The message that went out is that a band of Indians could take on this government. Tecumseh had his day and Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse. And we had ours.

John Chancellor (archival news anchor): We have tonight one of the strangest stories to come along in a long time. A group of American Indians has taken over the town of Wounded Knee in South Dakota and they have been holding it for nearly a whole day. This afternoon the FBI said the Indians are in charge of the town.

Agnes Gildersleeve (archival): We had just finished eating our dinner and um so I looked out the window and I said “Well, for heaven’s sake, who opened the store?” And they’re carrying things out, bringing things out by the carload. And I was floored, just floored.

Narrator: After stripping bare the Wounded Knee Trading Post, the village’s only store, the protestors took over a local church, holding the minister and other white residents hostage.  They quickly blocked all roads leading into town.

Joseph Trimbach, Former FBI Agent: Tuesday, February 27th, I received a telephone call from some news outlet. I was told that the caravan had forcibly took over the village, were holding hostages, causing destruction there. So I immediately got my agents together, and I proceeded to the main entrance to Wounded Knee.

Jim Robideau, Former AIM Member, Spirit Lake Nation: We saw a Fed car coming. And then it – then it was a – it kind of came, drove just right up kinda, not too far off. So when they come on, they got out of their car. They went looking around and as soon as they put their glasses up, we opened up on ‘em. We let them know we are here, and uh that’s far enough.

Joseph Trimbach, Former FBI Agent: I called inside Wounded Knee and I said, “Look, let’s get together and have a meeting so we can stop the potential for bloodshed here.  Let’s talk about this.” As I walked up to them I see all these rifles pointed at me and it uh gives you an uneasy feeling.

Joseph Trimbach (archival): Yes, sir. Joseph Trimbach with the FBI.

Russell Means, Former AIM Leader, Oglala Lakota Tribe: Trimbach came to that roadblock. And you could tell he’d been up all night. And he was very irritable.

Joseph Trimbach (archival): We have law enforcement up here that’s armed, and we have hostages here…

Joseph Trimbach, Former FBI Agent: I have no idea what’s going to happen next. They came out and gave me this list of demands.

Narrator: The protesters called for a federal investigation of corruption on reservations in South Dakota, and immediate Senate hearings on broken treaties with Indian nations.

Carter Camp, Former AIM Leader, Ponca Tribe: We were angry about losing our land. Losing our language. You know –being-uh- ripped off of our ability to live as Indian people. Our parents was telling us “You have to walk the white man road. The Indian ways are gonna be gone. Be a Christian, you know. Go to school and learn that English but don’t learn your own language. We wanted to give our lives in such a way that would bring attention to what was happening in Indian country and we were pretty sure that we were gonna have to give our lives.

Narrator: The protesters demanded one change close to home. Through a translator, the Lakota chief Fools Crow called for the immediate ouster of Dick Wilson, the elected head of the tribal government there on Pine Ridge.

Lakota Elder (archival): Wilson molest the Indians. Sometimes threatening them and so forth.  Before the sunset, we want him out of office and there will be no trouble.

Joseph Trimbach, Former FBI Agent: My initial reaction was, “This is something way beyond my pay grade. Someone in Washington’s gonna have to handle this.”

Narrator: The standoff was unfolding on the Pine Ridge Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota — not far from where chiefs like Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse had once led their people into battle.

Robert Warrior, Writer, Osage Nation: The Lakota, who Americans call the Sioux are iconic in American history and the American imagination. These are buffalo hunters who lived in teepees, who were at the battle with, uh, with General Custer. Nearly everything about Lakota life is firmly implanted in the way that Americans think about Indians.

Narrator: By 1973, the Lakota way of life on the plains was largely in the past. The Oglala Sioux Tribal government ran things on Pine Ridge, and where traditional chiefs had once sought consensus, elected Chairman Dick Wilson ruled with an iron hand.

Steve Hendricks, Writer: He was like a Chicago ward boss from the 1930s, big flour sack of a guy, wore dark glasses inside and out, was fond of drinking and uh, brought all his friends and family and cronies into office with him, effect. Gave them jobs on the federal payroll.

James Abourezk, Former Senator: On the Pine Ridge Reservation, as with most reservations, the tribal chairman and the council have a great deal of power to spread money around, to spread food around, or to withhold it. Or to favor one part of the reservation over another, which is what was happening.

Narrator: Wilson favored mixed-race, assimilated Indians like himself, and slighted the traditional Sioux who spoke their language, practiced their religion, and remained loyal to the traditional Oglala chiefs.

Reporter (archival): Do you get any help from the tribal council?

Indian Woman (archival): No. Dick Wilson’s the president here. He’s the worst one I think. He’s the- I don’t know he gets the most of everything.

Paul Chaat Smith, Writer, Comanche Nation: The federal census, I think every decade through the mid to end of the 20th Century, show Pine Ridge as the poorest jurisdiction in the United States. So there's poverty and then there's reservation poverty.

Narrator: When traditional Oglalas challenged corruption in tribal government, Dick Wilson responded with force.

Regina Brave, Pine Ridge Resident, Oglala Lakota Tribe: He had his own army, which intimidated, uh, the full-bloods mostly, the traditional people. His goons started beating up the people. And no charges were ever pressed. And if they did, it got thrown out of court. He controlled the whole reservation.

Marvin Stoldt, Former BIA Police Office, Oglala Lakota Tribe: Some of the officers hated to arrest any of Dick’s people in spite of the fact that they did break the law. He helped me a number of times, so I felt that I owed him a loyalty. And, uh, and so I didn’t support everything he did, but irregardless of what he did, I still felt that loyalty.

Dick Wilson (archival): There’s been a lot of accusations made here lately, and one in particular that upsets me is the fact that I am using a goon squad, so to speak. They are respectable and honest citizens of Pine Ridge.

Goon 1: We’re all sharpshooters. Tell ‘em the goon squad’s comin’.

Goon 2: Let’s go and get ‘em!

Narrator: In late 1972, traditional Oglalas came together to push for Wilson’s removal.

Jim Robideau, Former AIM Member, Spirit Lake Nation: We started a Civil Rights Commission, Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Commission, and from there they got the documentation of the corruption, of the misuse of funds. They got the evidence.

Regina Brave, Pine Ridge Resident, Oglala Lakota Tribe: And eventually the Civil Rights, they had a stack about an inch and a half thick of all the testimony and violations, civil rights violations. Nobody ever got charged.

Narrator: Prompted by the dissidents, the tribal council held impeachment hearings in February 1973. But Wilson intimidated witnesses, strong-armed council members, and managed to survive. Many Oglalas felt they had one last, desperate option.

Woman in Car (archival): We’ve always been peaceful and pretty much mind our own business, making our living and raising our family, law-abiding. Well I believe that the time has come that we have to commit violence in order to be heard. I don’t want to see anybody killed or anything, but the time is gonna come when violence might have to be committed in order to wake the people up.

Narrator: By the second day of the siege, the spectacle of armed Indians holding a town — and 11 hostages — had put the U.S. government on full alert.

Fred Briggs (archival news reporter): By this morning, the entire area was blocked off by police — there were roadblocks as far away as the Nebraska state line.

Kent Frizzell (archival):  On the far rise is roadblock 1. We have further roadblocks around the perimeter which encompasses approximately a 15 mile area.

Joseph Trimbach, Former FBI Agent: The director said “Tell Trimbach he can have anything he wants,” which was pretty neat because that was like a blank check. So I had agents go up to Rapid City and buy every rifle that they could find in the city because we needed them, like, right now. So they came down, and now we at least had rifles for protection instead of just side arms.

Robert Warrior, Writer, Osage Nation: The military response is overwhelming. It involves plans using the US army to put down this rebellion. Clearly there are people within the Federal Government who see a need to take it to the limit.

Dennis Banks, Former AIM Leader, Ojibwa Tribe: I was awakened. There was a deep rumbling, droning noise. We were looking around and we were surrounded by armored personnel carriers, APCs.

Russell Means, Former AIM Leader, Oglala Lakota Tribe: All of a sudden we saw these two fighter jets coming, and they circled around, and from the South they just came right at us. We thought it was over.  That’s napalm. Dennis Banks pulled out his pistol and he started firin’, boom-boom-boom-boom.  Then they were gone.  You know, it was that proverbial, uh, last act of defiance, you know.  Here’s that little mouse and here comes the big, huge eagle, and the little mouse is standing there like this.

Narrator: On the afternoon of the second day, South Dakota senators George McGovern and James Abourezk arrived. They hoped that if they could resolve the issue of the hostages, the crisis at Wounded Knee could be ended quickly.

Russell Means, Former Aim Leader: When they came in it was very news worthy. They came in with the news media. That’s how the networks got in. And they said, ‘We wanna see the hostages.’

James Abourezk, Former Senator: The agreement I’d had with Russell Means was that if we landed at Pine Ridge he would release the hostages.

James Abourezk (archival): I have an indication through an intermediary that they will release…

James Abourezk, Former Senator: And I said, “Well where are the hostages? You’re supposed to release them. You agreed to release them.” So they’re standing over there. So I went over and I said-uh, “You folks, we’ve rescued you. You can leave now.”

James Abourezk (archival): If you wanted to leave the Wounded Knee area could you go?

Russell Means, Former AIM Leader, Oglala Lakota Tribe: And we’re sitting there on pins and needles.

Carter Camp (archival): Ask Trimbach, we had people with him and said that they can leave!

Russell Means, Former AIM Leader, Oglala Lakota Tribe: And Mrs. Gildersleeve, the matriarch: “We’re not hostages, we’re gonna remain here! It’s your fault that these Indians are here! Have you listened to them? We’re not leaving because you’ll kill them if we leave!”

Narrator: Once they realized no one was being held hostage, the Senators hoped to persuade the protesters to stand down by offering to convene hearings on their concerns — sometime in the future.

Russell Means (archival): We knew that a put-off, a stalling tactic, would happen once there was no threat to any other lives other than Indian lives. You’re gonna walk away from here and say ‘after awhile’, doksha-lo! You know. And we’re not going for doksha anymore! We’re not going for later anymore, Senator. Now I told you over the phone that I bet and everyone here and down there have bet with their lives.

James Abourezk, Former Senator: AIM decided that their strategy would be to confront the government. And try to win the public relations battle. Prior to that time being a mister nice guy didn’t really work with the government; they didn’t give a damn. So that’s the reason that AIM thought this was the way to do it.

Narrator: 250 armed U.S. personnel now surrounded the village of Wounded Knee.

Dennis Banks, Former AIM Leader, Ojibwa Tribe: I felt good. This is why AIM was alive. This is why we came to be. Stand up against the FBI. Stand up against the U.S. marshals. Stand up against GOONs, you know, tribal police, and inside we’ve got freedom. Don’t let nobody in.

Narrator: Since its founding in 1968 the American Indian Movement had been divisive — its militant tactics controversial even among Native people. Created in Minneapolis by young urban Indians fed up with police harassment, the group had shown a knack for generating publicity. Members had seized high-profile symbols — Plymouth Rock, the Mayflower, Mt. Rushmore — and in November 1972, had occupied and vandalized the Washington headquarters of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Weeks later, in early 1973, AIM took its campaign into the reservation border towns of South Dakota.

James Abourezk, Former Senator: In those days there was a tremendous amount of racism, uh, especially in the border towns around the reservations. I mean real racism where Indians are practically invisible.

Madonna Thunder Hawk, Former AIM Member, Two Kettle Lakota: There was towns you didn’t drive through, you didn’t go through. Especially women. You didn’t walk down the street of any border town by yourself because you’d be accosted by any white man that felt like it.

Narrator: Just weeks before the occupation of Wounded Knee, a white man killed an Indian near Custer, South Dakota, 50 miles from Pine Ridge. When local officials charged him with manslaughter, not murder, 200 angry AIM protesters came to town.

Russell Means (archival):  You charge a white man, premeditated murder, you charge him with second-degree manslaughter! And we ain’t going for it anymore. And I know this whole damn town is an armed camp.

Dennis Banks (archival): Hey listen, White Man! I have had all the bullshit from your race as I can take!

Narrator: When police barred them from entering the courthouse, AIM members forced their way in.

Assorted Voices (archival): Hey! Open them doors up!

Jim Robideau, Former AIM Member, Spirit Lake Nation: Just as we walked in through the door, then we were attacked by, uh, law enforcement. We were fighting and they come at me with a nightstick, so I blocked it and took it away and started using it on them.

Edgar Bear Runner, Activist, Oglala Lakota Tribe: I was right on the steps, you know, and things were happening. We bloodied the guy; we took the helmet away. We bloodied him up. Then I ran across to help get gas in the filling station. We were filling up and making Molotov cocktails and busting the bottles on the building, and the fire started on the wall and everything.

Narrator: Protesters set the courthouse ablaze, and left Custer in shambles.

Paul Chaat Smith, Writer, Comanche Nation: There was absolutely an element in AIM that considered itself a revolutionary organization who were comfortable being around guns, who absolutely loved the idea of AIM being outlaws — who just wanted to get it on.

Narrator: The confrontation in Custer caught the attention of the Oglala dissidents on Pine Ridge. Three weeks later, when their campaign to impeach Dick Wilson failed, they asked AIM for help.

Robert Warrior, Writer, Osage Nation: Calling in AIM is attractive, but it’s a roll of the dice. It’s a roll of the dice because where AIM goes chaos often follows. So that when those traditional chiefs bring in AIM, they’re doing this in full knowledge that as they go down the road they don’t know exactly what’s going to happen.

Narrator: The Oglalas had exhausted all legal options. They believed that to put an end to Wilson’s harassment and intimidation, they needed what AIM could offer.

Robert Warrior, Writer, Osage Nation: AIM can bring bodies. They can bring people. They have the phone numbers of people at TV networks uh, who can get on airplanes and bring television cameras out. None of the established national Indian organizations can do what AIM does.

Dennis Banks, Former AIM Leader, Ojibwa Tribe: The American Indian Movement’s motto was anytime, anywhere, any place. And that was the most important job that we could do, is to be where there was injustice and to confront it.

Narrator: At a crowded meeting at a community center, dissident Oglalas, five traditional chiefs, and AIM representatives finally arrived at a radical plan: together they would seize the town of Wounded Knee. They would force Dick Wilson from office, and, for the first time in nearly a century, draw national attention to indian concerns.

Russell Means (archival):  The Oglala Nation is at a crossroads that, that can change the course of history for Indian people all across the nation. And I would like to ask that the chiefs listen very closely to what is being said here.

Carter Camp, Former AIM Leader, Ponca Tribe: There was this hesitation. No one could make a decision, and no one would endorse us and then the women started to talk.

Narrator: Ellen Moves Camp, a founder of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization, argued in favor of occupying Wounded Knee.

Ellen Moves Camp (archival): This has been going on for a long time before we invited the American Indian Movement here. Because the people were scared and they are scared of Dick Wilson and all his men. I don’t see why…. all these people come from all over. I don’t see why they-they can’t take him and throw him out or throw him in jail or something — the way he’s been terrorizing people here on the reservation. And I live in Pine Ridge at that gunpoint. But, I’m not scared of them anymore.

Dennis Banks, Former AIM Leader, Ojibwa Tribe: And she was pushing. She was pushing to spark something. And, oh, it did.

Narrator: Finally, Fools Crow, the oldest traditional chief present, spoke. “Go ahead and do it,” he said. “Take your brothers from the American Indian Movement and go to Wounded Knee and make your stand there.”

Lou Davis (archival reporter):  Today a teepee was set up in what is now called the Demilitarized Zone. Both sides are meeting there to negotiate an end to the takeover.

But the progress is agonizingly slow.

Robert Warrior, Writer, Osage Nation: There were negotiations going on almost always during the occupation, attempts on both sides to reach some sort of agreement.

Narrator: Government negotiators were uncompromising. They rejected demands to uphold treaty rights, and insisted that they were powerless to remove Dick Wilson, regardless of the charges against him, as he was chairman of a sovereign Indian Nation. Talks stalled completely when the protesters demanded to deal with the US Secretary of State.

Reporter (archival):  I understand they want Henry Kissinger out here. Do you think this is realistic? Do you think he’ll come?

Carter Camp (archival): Why not? You know- I don’t see why the North Vietnamese should take precedent over-over the American Indian people. You know, we’ve been fighting this war for 400 years. And if he can spare the time to go over there, he should be able to spare the time to come here.

Reporter (archival): But it would be correct to describe the current situation as an impasse?

Federal Agent (archival): If there’s such a thing as an impasse on an impasse, then that’s what we have.

Narrator: Officials from the departments of Justice and the Interior took the lead in negotiations. The attention of the White House was elsewhere — on the unfolding Watergate scandal.

James Abourezk, Former Senator: There’s no question that the White House was distracted during this Wounded Knee siege. Although they sent midlevel officials out to run this siege operation, uh they didn’t have their mind on it. Nixon had his mind on trying to survive the Watergate thing. Things might have turned out a lot differently had they not been distracted.

Indians (archival): Turn that fuckin’ light out!

Narrator: Within Wounded Knee, the days were relatively calm, while the nights exploded with gunfire.

Indians (archival): Just take these unarmed men and tell ‘em…Turn that goddamned light out or I’ll shoot the fucker out!!

Jim Robideau, Former AIM Member, Spirit Lake Nation: They were shooting machine gun fire at us, tracers coming at us at nighttime just like a war zone. We had some Vietnam vets with us, and they said, “Man, this is just like Vietnam”.

Bill Zimmerman, Pilot/Activist: There was actually a third force at Wounded Knee in addition to the Indian activists inside of Wounded Knee and the Federal Marshals and FBI agents surrounding Wounded Knee and that third force was the Goon Squad.

Reporter (archival): What is the mood among your people at this time?

Dick Wilson (archival): They’re very ticked off.

Reporter (archival):  What are they doing right now?

Dick Wilson (archival):  Shining their guns up.

Narrator: As tribal chairman, Wilson wielded supreme authority on Pine Ridge. Erected his own roadblocks outside the federal perimeter. Even U.S. officials had to go through him.

Goon (archival): This is as far as you’re going.

Wayne Colburn (archival): Well, I want him to go in.

Goon (archival): Well, you’ll have to get Wilson out here.

Wayne Colburn (archival): Well, you’ll have to get him, because I’m taking them in.

Goon (archival): And, you’re who?

Wayne Colburn (archival):  I’m Wayne Colburn, Director of the US Marshall Service.

Goon (archival):  Hmm. Well, what do you think? Should we let him in?

Bill Zimmerman, Pilot/Activist: These goons were armed and they frequently uh, got in between the federal lines and the Wounded Knee perimeter and shot — and in both directions — with the intent of provoking firefights because they were angry that the government didn't go in and take over Wounded Knee.

Narrator: Inside the village, the protestors had their own military operation, led by Indians trained by the government they now took up arms against.

Ken Tiger, Former AIM Member, Seminole Tribe: There was a lot of people there that had been in Vietnam. And a lot of people had just been in the military. Some older people had come in and they had actually been in Korea. They knew how to give orders. They knew how to take orders. And they knew how to do things that they didn’t have to be told twice.

Madonna Thunder Hawk, Former AIM Member, Two Kettle Lakota: I knew we were making history for our people. It didn’t all happen in the 1800s. We’re still fighting in the modern day. I mean that’s how I felt! That, it was a continuation, and that’s why I was not afraid. I was not afraid.

Narrator: In the 19th century, the Lakota fought furiously to defend their territory against relentless American expansion. In 1868, embattled Lakota chiefs signed the Fort Laramie Treaty to protect more than thirty million acres of their land. But the United States soon reneged, and forced the Lakota onto small, desolate reservations.

Carter Camp, Former AIM Leader, Ponca Tribe: Americans like to think that American Indian history is something in the past. I’m one generation removed from the genocide of my tribe. And every tribe in this country has a time of horror — I mean a time of absolute horror — when they were confronted by this invader. And some of it happened almost five hundred years ago. But as they come across the plains, our time of horror came in the late 1800s. And we remember it very well.

Narrator: In the frigid winter of 1890, Chief Big Foot was leading a group of Lakota, mainly women and children, to shelter on the Pine Ridge reservation. On the morning of December 29th, they were attacked by the U.S. Army on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek.

Charlotte Black Elk, Oglala Historian, Oglala Lakota Tribe: My great grandmother is Katy War Bonnet. She was a survivor at Wounded Knee. When the shooting broke out, she and her sister, Ka-keek-sa-we, ran down into the ravine and made it to some plum bushes. And she could hear the firing and the firing and hollering and then finally it was quiet.

Narrator: More than 300 Lakota people lay dead. After remaining untouched in the ice and snow for three days, they were buried in a mass grave. The massacre would mark the brutal end of centuries of armed Indian resistance. those who came nearly a hundred years later, Wounded Knee was sacred land.

Carter Camp, Former AIM Leader, Ponca Tribe: I walked over to a gully and I picked up some sage and I went and washed myself and I prayed to those ancestors that were there in that gully and I said “We’re back. We have returned, my relations. We-bla-huh”.

Bill Wordham (archival reporter): This is where the television crews await the hour-by-hour events in Wounded Knee. This privileged position is protected by the Indian Chiefs. Clearly the chiefs are anxious that this rebellion and its outcome receive as much publicity as possible.

Bill Zimmerman, Pilot/Activist: It would have been very simple for the federal forces to go into Wounded Knee and take over. There would have been some casualties, but probably the government would have considered them tolerable. What made it so interesting was that the Indians existed underneath a protective bubble of publicity and shame. Because everybody knew that this was the site of the last massacre of the Indian Wars and the last thing the government wanted to see, was a massacre on the same site.

Narrator: One week into the siege, all three television networks had stationed reporters in Wounded Knee. Polls estimated that more than 90% of Americans were following the crisis on the nightly news.

Carter Camp, Former AIM Leader, Ponca Tribe: If they came and killed all of us, it would be recorded and it would be seen by the world where the 1890 massacre wasn’t.  And if they didn’t, if they decided, you know, that that media was there so they don’t want to murder all of us, well, then the media is there to tell our side of the story.

Madonna Thunder Hawk, Former AIM Member, Two Kettle Lakota: They wanted this stoic- you know- American Indian man with a gun. America’s picture of “The Indian.” We didn’t care, as long as the word was getting out.

Archival Footage: (Reporter speaking in French)

Mike Her Many Horses, Oglala Historian, Oglala Lakota Tribe: There was a lot of folks here, a lot of foreign press were here. And they made it out to be kind of a cowboy-Indian adventure, you know. More people wanted confrontation you know, that seemed to attract the viewers.

Russell Means (archival): You guys get so tight and start panicking and you get down on the press. Hell, we want ‘em to film this bullshit! We can’t let ‘em fire first and open up with automatic weapons. We gotta get that filmed. We got .22’s in our hand against APC’s. So, don’t be jumpin’ on the press!

Narrator: The news out of South Dakota held Indians around the country spellbound. Some were ashamed by AIM’s armed display of defiance, but many were inspired.

Ken Tiger, Former AIM Member, Seminole Tribe: I left school and me and another guy left and we drove in his car from — we were in Central California and we drove up to Oakland and from Oakland we drove back to South Dakota. Up until ‘73, when it started, I was never involved in anything politically, dealing with, uh, either Native Americans or any other organization. I just felt like I should go up there and I did.

Bill Wordham (archival reporter): You all are not Oglala Sioux, I take it.

Assorted Voices (archival): I am, I’m not.

Indian Man #2 (archival): Chippewa.

Bill Wordham (archival): You’re Chippewa? Where are you from?

Indian Man #2 (archival): Minnesota.

Bill Wordham (archival): And what about you sir, where are you from?

Indian Man #1 (archival): Winnebago. Wisconsin.

Indian Woman #3 (archival): Cheyenne. Oklahoma.

Bill Wordham (archival): And you’re not necessarily all members of AIM, huh?

Indian Man #1 (archival): We didn’t say that.

Bill Wordham (archival): Are you members or AIM?

Indian Man #1 (archival): We didn’t say that either.

Indian Woman #1 (archival): We’re here to support our Indian people that are in Wounded Knee.

Paul Chaat Smith, Writer, Comanche Nation: This generation of Indians in the late-60s, early 70s, who for the most part, they had been to boarding school or their parents had been to boarding school, which was explicitly about getting Indians off the reservations, to not be Indian, to not speak their language. For those Indian people, it was this moment in which you could see, on television, there was another way, there was another possibility. It was electrifying.

Archival Footage: (Children sing “Ten Little Indians”)

Dennis Banks, Former AIM Leader, Ojibwa Tribe: There is one dark day in the lives of Indian children; the day when they are forcibly taken away from those who love and care for them, from those who speak their language. They are dragged, some screaming and weeping, others in silent terror, to a boarding school where they are to be remade into white kids.

Narrator: By the late 19th century, the Indian Wars were over. The United States seized on a ruthless strategy to assimilate Native children to a subordinate place in white-dominated society: government-run boarding schools.

Dennis Banks, Former AIM Leader, Ojibwa Tribe: I was 5 years old. My mother was crying, and they were taking us off and my sister Audrey, uh, who-who also was like a second mother to me and a very close friend as a sister and my brother, Mark — they were very sad. Within two hours or so after the buses filled up and we're down the road — this is the furthest I've ever been from my home in my life. And then of course it turns into evening and we arrive at this place.

Walter Little Moon, Wounded Knee Resident, Oglala Lakota Tribe: I ended up in a place where nothing… nothing… nothing made any sense at all. You know, it wasn’t home. It wasn’t uh — I didn’t know anything about school. Nobody ever even told me anything about school... I didn’t know what the education was. I remember that I wanted to go home. Period. I didn’t want to be there. I just wanted to go home.

Dennis Banks, Former AIM Leader, Ojibwa Tribe: We all had to strip down naked, and then they put the DDT on us. They line us up and they're cutting our hair. You have long hair, you have braids, and then that gets cut off. And I would say within a matter of an hour and a half we're standing there, all looking alike.

Narrator: Between the 1870s and the 1960s, over one hundred thousand Indian children were sent to one of the nearly 500 boarding schools scattered across the United States.

Boarding School Newsreel (archival): Through the agencies of the government, they are being rapidly brought from their state of comparative savagery and barbarism to one of civilization.

Archival Footage: (Children sing “Ten Little Indians”)

Dennis Banks, Former AIM Leader, Ojibwa Tribe: You couldn’t sing any native songs or tribal songs. They just started using English, you could only, you could not use any other language.  We’d whisper, ‘Pass the pa-qua-shi-ga, pa-qua-shi-ga’ — pass the bread over. It’s like I had to be two people. I had to be Nowa Cumig, and I had to be Dennis Banks. Nowa Cumig is my real name, my Ojibwa name. Dennis Banks had to be very protective of Nowa Cumig. And so I learned who the presidents were. And I learned the math. learned the social studies. I learned the English, and Nowa Cumig was still there.

Walter Little Moon, Wounded Knee Resident, Oglala Lakota Tribe: This is education that was promised us. That was guaranteed us through the treaties, but it wasn’t. It was torture. Brainwashing. They called us many different names. Savage. Dumb. I got uh, beat for looking like an Indian, smelling like an Indian, even speaking Indian. Everything I did.

Dennis Banks, Former AIM Leader, Ojibwa Tribe: Their de-Indianization program, it failed. But, the toll was devastating. It destroyed our family. It destroyed the relationship we had with our mother. I could never regain that friendship-loveship relationship that I had with my mother. It wasn’t there anymore, and that’s what, to this day, I keep thinking — ‘damn this government’. What it did to me and what it did to thousands of other children across this country.

Ralph Erickson (archival): If the leaders at Wounded Knee are bent on violence, that is their concern, but I call upon them now to send the women and the children, both resident and non-resident out of Wounded Knee before darkness falls tomorrow.

Regina Brave, Pine Ridge Resident, Oglala Lakota Tribe: The United States government sent an ultimatum to the people in Wounded Knee that if they didn't leave on a certain day, that they were coming in, they would remove us by force.

Dennis Banks (archival): We are going to reject any kind of conditions that pushes us out of the Wounded Knee area until all…

Regina Brave, Pine Ridge Resident, Oglala Lakota Tribe: I told Dennis, just burn it. At that time, we all started making preparations for making our last stand.

Dennis Banks, Former AIM Leader, Ojibwa Tribe: We smudged everybody as they came up and painted them. When you go off to war if you get killed in battle then they’ll, then that paint will signify that you went there with the blessings of the pipe and that you’ll go to the spirit world with great honor.

Regina Brave, Pine Ridge Resident, Oglala Lakota Tribe: I had this little bitty bag — little bitty bag, with little bitty fringes on it. I had one bullet in there. And I had a semi-automatic, and I only put one bullet in there.  Somebody said, “How come one bullet?” I said, “I'm gonna wait, 'cause if I'm going, I'm gonna take somebody with me.”

Dennis Banks (archival): The government just backed down on that 6 o’clock thing.

Narrator: Two days after issuing the ultimatum, U.S. officials shifted tactics. Hoping the occupation would simply peter out, they removed roadblocks around Wounded Knee andpersuaded Dick Wilson to remove his. Federal officials would keep the inflammatory tribal chairman on the sidelines for the rest of the occupation. But when the roadblocks were lifted, new protesters and fresh supplies flooded in. On March 11th, revitalized occupation leaders made a startling announcement.

Russell Means (archival):  The leadership of the Oglala Sioux here present in Wounded Knee, have declared Wounded Knee an independent country. From here further, if any spy from the United States of America is found within our borders, he will be dealt with as any spy in a time of war and be shot before a firing squad. (Cheering)

Narrator: The battered hamlet of Wounded Knee was now the Independent Oglala Nation. While U.S. officials hurriedly put roadblocks back in place, the new nation asserted its sovereignty. A delegation led by Chief Fools Crow traveled to the United Nations to put the Oglalas’s case before the world.

Reporter (archival): They arrived almost an hour late. They said taxi cab drivers just wouldn’t stop to pick them up. Wearing a medal given to the tribe by the United States government after the signing of the treaty of 1868, 78-year-old chief Fools Crow, through an interpreter, explained why the group came to New York.

Chief Fools Crow (archival): (Speaking in Lakota) “It is our last effort in this trouble. I think we have exhausted all other means of a settlement of the trouble we have at Wounded Knee.

Narrator: The delegation failed to get official recognition at the U.N. and returned to Wounded Knee. There, inside the borders of the Independent Oglala Nation, the chiefs and medicine men introduced Lakota culture to the protesters, many of whom had come from cities and were disconnected from Indian traditions.

Clyde Bellecourt, Former AIM Leader, White Earth Nation: One of the first things that we did when we got into Wounded Knee is we built a purification lodge, an inipi, a sweat lodge. We were all required, everybody was required to go in there and purify themselves and to uh... pray and ask their creator for help. Everything that we did uh... was preceded by prayer and gathering, smoking of the-- of the uh... sacred pipe and tobacco offerings, everything.

Archival Footage: (Crow Dog speaking Lakota)

Paul Chaat Smith, Writer, Comanche Nation: The Indian Movement was different than other political movements of the time because it defined itself as a spiritual movement. Their trajectory in a way mirrors what a lot of the Indian world was about, which was trying to connect with traditional knowledge, culture, religion.

Steve Hendricks, Writer: One of the things that AIM tried to do was to return “Indian-ness” to all Indians. Whether folks lived in the city, on reservations, whether they spoke the language or didn’t speak the language, if you were Indian, you could sort of return to the tribe.

Narrator: Many of the protesters had left reservations behind, along with thousands of other Indians, as part of the federal government’s Indian relocation program of the 1950s and 60s.

James Abourezk, Former Senator: The government thought one way to solve the Indian problem was to relocate Indians from the reservation to the bigger cities. They couldn’t kill the Indians anymore. That was out of fashion by the fifties. Uh- so, they decided to experiment, they did a lot of experimenting with the Indians. Relocation Program was one such experiment.

Madonna Thunder Hawk, Former AIM Member, Two Kettle Lakota: It was exciting, relocation. You know, you get to go to a big city and uh help you find a job. And uh, you get to see the rest of the country. Of course you weren’t forced to go on relocation, but they made it look good: “Streets paved with gold.” We ended up in Cleveland, Ohio.

Narrator: Over 100,000 Indians were relocated in just 15 years. The government promised to help them find schools, housing, and employment. But for many, the promise rang hollow.

Madonna Thunder Hawk, Former AIM Member, Two Kettle Lakota: They put us in a real dumpy motel. And I was just sitting there thinking, ‘I wonder what’s going on at home?’ I could just see the rolling hills and, the small, small town. They’re all just moving and walking and going real fast. And nobody’s stopping to look around. That’s why we stayed in our apartments or stayed in our rooms.

Clyde Bellecourt, Former AIM Leader, White Earth Nation: If you went and uh… applied for a job, you better not tell them you’re Indian. You better tell them you’re French or something, Italian or some other nationality or you wouldn’t get the job.

Narrator: By the 1970’s, half of all Indians lived in cities, and more than 100 tribes had ceased to legally exist. But the Relocation Program produced an unanticipated result.

LaNada Warjack, Activist, Shoshone-Bannock Tribes: It pulled us all closer together. We could always spot each other in the city. So if we’d see an Indian on the street walking down Market Street, we’d look at each other, and we’d just smile and kind of shake our head, or, you know, in acknowledgement of each other. We didn’t care what tribe anyone was. We were Indian people. We were a race.

Narrator: The new pan-Indian identity led to the growth of activist groups around the country.  The American Indian Movement was the most radical.

John Trudell, Former AIM Leader, Santee Sioux Tribe: There were a lot of Native people that were afraid to stand up. Geronimo demonstrated, man! Crazy Horse demonstrated! And for us, the baby boom generation, circumstances were right. We could raise our voice.

Russell Means (archival): Do you see him? That little black spot out there?

Reporter (archival): What do you see?

Russell Means (archival):  See. See that tree line over there?  Right there.

Narrator: Over the course of the siege, government forces would pound the village with more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition. It was inevitable that there would be casualties.

Various People (archival): Where’s the car? Where’s the car?

Marshal Radio (archival): The Wounded Knee apparently has a wounded party…

Webster Poor Bear (archival): It really don’t bug me that much. I really don’t mind getting shot. We are willing to sacrifice our lives for our children so they will not have to grow up in the society we grow up in today.

Webster Poor Bear, Activist, Oglala Lakota Tribe: When Milo and myself got hit, uh, we knew that no one was, no one was going to go through this completely unscathed. There was somebody that was going to get it again.

Narrator: With the White House increasingly preoccupied with Watergate, the government had allowed the occupation of Wounded Knee to drag on. But at the end of March, the Justice Department sent a new negotiator who changed tactics.

Kent Frizzell, Former Department of Justice Official: Shortly after I arrived, the lifestyle was somewhat changed of the occupants of Wounded Knee. Uh…the electricity was cut off, the water line was cut.

Narrator: Then Frizzell cut off the protesters’ most vital lifeline: he ordered reporters to leave town.

Marshal (archival): Hey, until we get the word y’all get back in your cars okay? Just get back in the car til we get the word.  Don’t touch my hand, either.  Just get back in the car ‘til we get the word!

Kent Frizzell (archival): I frankly think that the barring of the news media has had an effect on negotiations. A positive effect from the government’s point of view because…

Kent Frizzell, Former Department of Justice Official: All of a sudden, those in Wounded Knee weren't seeing themselves uh…on top of a pony waving an AK-47 at the American personnel on the ground.

Narrator: Just when the siege was officially kicked off the airwaves, it got renewed publicity from an unlikely source — Hollywood.

Sacheen Little Feather (archival): He very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award…

Narrator: Marlon Brando refused his Oscar for Best Actor in The Godfather, in protest of the negative portrayal of Indians in the movies.

Sacheen Little Feather (archival): (booing). Excuse me.

Narrator: Brando sent an Apache actress named Sacheen Little Feather to represent him at the awards ceremony, watched by millions. Later, backstage, she explained Brando’s absence.

Sacheen Little Feather (archival): I have indicated in this statement that Marlon Brando is on his way to Wounded Knee. At that time, you’ll have to take me for his word.

Narrator: Brando never made it to Wounded Knee, but a poll taken four days after the Oscars showed his sympathies were widely shared: most Americans sided with the protesters. Within a week, the two sides reached a deal.

News Anchor (archival): The siege of Wounded Knee, South Dakota ended today.

News Anchor #2 (archival): Representatives of the Indians and US Interior Department officials formally signed the pact this afternoon inside the embattled village.

Narrator: Government officials promised to investigate corruption on Pine Ridge, and to immediately convene a White House meeting and Congressional hearings on treaty rights. their part, the protesters agreed to lay down their arms.

Archival Footage: (Indians singing AIM song)

Carter Camp, Former AIM Leader, Ponca Tribe: You know, the first thing Indians do is break out a drum. You know so they started banging a drum and singing victory songs and everyone was hooping and cheering. That was a time when we really thought we won, and not only that, we thought that, uh, we had survived.

Kent Frizzell, Former Department of Justice Official: I talked to Chief Fools Crow, an elder and a full blood. Uh…I offered him a ride on my helicopter if he could get this young Indian lad to let me ride his pony. He thought it was a wonderful gesture and I did the same as I galloped off uh…on that pony bareback.

Narrator: Chief Bad Cob, medicine man Leonard Crow Dog, and Russell Means rushed to Washington for a meeting at the White House. But the deal quickly collapsed over the critical detail of what was to happen first — the White House meeting or the disarming of the protesters.

Kent Frizzell (archival): The White House will not negotiate while guns are pointed at Federal officials in Wounded Knee! That is our position! I believe it offers the only hope for a peaceful solution. And I for one am prepared to stand by the agreement until hell freezes over!

Russell Means, Former AIM Leader, Oglala Lakota Tribe: We give up our arms? Hello? That is so stupid, it’s beyond belief that they would even — they would even say that to the press.  What? These stupid Indians are gonna go to negotiate after they lay down their arms? What?  Nobody does that in the entire world in history.

Narrator: After the agreement unraveled, Russell Means was arrested. He would spend the rest of the occupation in jail.

Kent Frizzell (archival): The fun and games so far as I’m concerned are over. A United States Marshal has been seriously wounded.

Reporter (archival): Many of the some 300 persons in Wounded Knee are sick with bad colds. Doctors here report at least 15 persons here have pneumonia.

Reporter #2 (archival): The garbage is piling up. The food is running short. One meal a day is now the rule and that’s not much of a meal.

Madonna Thunder Hawk, Former AIM Member, Two Kettle Lakota: One time, one of the guys came in and he had a sack on his shoulders. And it was, I don't know, maybe a 50-pound bag of what they fed calves. So we just — that's what we ate. We made pancakes out of it and whatever. We just treated it like flour.

Dennis Banks (archival): We had been rationing ourselves to one meal a day, one full meal a day. We are cutting that effective today, to one half meal a day.

Bill Zimmerman, Pilot/Activist: At the time, I was minding my own business in Boston, following the Wounded Knee story in the news like everybody else.  One day, somebody walked into my office that I knew within the Boston anti-war movement. They had heard that I was a pilot and they needed somebody to go in there who could fly over the federal blockade and bring them some food.

Dennis Banks (archival): If there’s any plane comes by here today, we don’t want anybody taking any- taking any pot-shots at them because they will be making a food drop to us today. (Cheering)

Bill Zimmerman, Pilot/Activist: We operated out of Rapid City, South Dakota, at three o'clock in the morning. We were over Wounded Knee about 40 seconds, made the drop and we were gone. And 2,000 pounds of food landed in the village.

Beau Little Sky, Activist, Oglala Lakota Tribe: At first we thought we were bein’ attacked. We thought they were gassing us, you know, because what it was, it was the flour exploding and creating, uh, a big cloud. You know, then all of a sudden, you know, we said, “Oh, hey, this is food,” you know? So we're all out there gathering the food and the FBI opens up on us.

Narrator: The night before, a man named Frank Clearwater and his pregnant wife had arrived in the village. Clearwater said they had hitchhiked all the way from North Carolina.

Jim Robideau, Former AIM Member, Spirit Lake Nation: When he came in, he had his own gun.  He had a kind of a big long-barreled shotgun. It looked like he came out of the hills, too, you know. (Laughs) He said he was Cherokee, you know. Yeah, he looked like one of those mountain men.

Kevin McKiernan, Journalist: They had ready-made cigarettes, which was a very big deal because uh... we were all smoking in those days. And uh... and we were smoking cherry bark and things from uh... from- from the ground. And here was a ready-made cigarette. And so I remember Frank Clearwater lit it up and we passed it around in a- in a circle like a form of uh... communion.

Narrator: When bullets began to fly on the day of the food drop, Frank Clearwater took refuge with other protesters in a church. As they hugged the floor in an effort to stay out of harm’s way, a bullet tore through the plasterboard wall and struck Clearwater in the head. He had been in Wounded Knee for less than 24 hours.

Carter Camp, Former AIM Leader, Ponca Tribe: A brother named Strawberry had his hand on the back of his head and was holding his skull...  and I put my hand on his skull, tried to hold his brains in… and we took him, took him in the clinic and they couldn’t save him.

Narrator: The first death intensified the government’s determination to bring the siege to an end. In mid-April, a unit was put on alert at an Army base in Colorado. According to plans leaked to the press, the government was prepared to move into Wounded Knee with armored helicopters and tear gas.

Kent Frizzell, Former Department of Justice Official: The White House, the Department of Justice, were concerned with the confrontation going on all during the month of May into the summer. The college campuses, I was told, would be emptying out and all the adventure seekers would be infiltrating Wounded Knee. I was given a 10-day deadline.

Narrator: At the same time the government threatened military assault, officials were destabilizing the occupation using covert tactics.

Kent Frizzell (archival): I have some information that I think that you’ll be interested in. And it’s based on a source that we have utilized in the past and has furnished us information in the past within Wounded Knee. Now very frankly, I cannot identify him for obvious purposes.

Robert Warrior, Writer, Osage Nation: There were almost surely spies within Wounded Knee. The US government had infiltrated the American Indian Movement like it had infiltrated every political organization in the US during that time.

Steve Hendricks, Writer: AIM knew that they had spies in their midst and that was part of the FBI's game. Not just to have the spies to get information on what AIM was doing, but to get AIM guessing as to who those spies were. To get them paranoid, and pointing fingers at one another.

Dennis Banks (archival): What is that? What did you point at me?

Robert Warrior, Writer, Osage Nation: One effect of that paranoia inside Wounded Knee is that there are purported cases of people who disappeared and who were thought to have been killed mainly because people didn’t know who they were and who assumed that they were spies.

Kent Frizzell, Former Department of Justice Official: I got daily reports. I got informer reports. This information came to me through the tribal government and through the FBI.

Narrator: On April 26th, Wounded Knee sustained the heaviest barrage of gunfire since the start of the siege. When the shooting subsided, Buddy Lamont, a 31 year-old Oglala from Pine Ridge, came out to investigate. Lamont was a Vietnam veteran who’d been in Wounded Knee since the beginning.

Beau Little Sky, Activist, Oglala Lakota Tribe: Everybody started getting up and — and goin' back to — about their normal routines, and Buddy came — got up and walked over to the trenches where we were at. A sniper at a good thousand yards hit him squarely in the heart, and he wasn't even aimin' the gun. He had his back turned, you know, and his - his - his, uh, weapon was on his shoulder, you know. To me, that was murder.

Narrator: Negotiators agreed to a ceasefire so that Lamont’s family could bury him at Wounded Knee. On May 6th, Buddy Lamont was laid to rest next to the victims of the 1890 massacre.

Dennis Banks, Former AIM Leader, Ojibwa Tribe: They asked me if I would, uh, say a prayer for him, which I did. It said, ‘2000 people came and one remained.’

Robert Warrior, Writer, Osage Nation: Buddy Lamont’s death becomes, really the, the final blow to a lot of people inside Wounded Knee, especially the Oglalas from Pine Ridge. He was somebody that everybody knew, everybody knew his Mom and he was there for all the right reasons, fighting for something that he cared about. And for Buddy Lamont to die was more of a tragedy than most people could bear.

Narrator: Fools Crow and the other Oglala leaders had had enough. spite AIM’s objections, they insisted on bringing the occupation to an end. On May 8, 1973, after 71 days, the siege of Wounded Knee was over. In final talks with the government, AIM leaders agreed to disarm and submit to arrest. But many of the protesters were already making other plans.

Jim Robideau, Former AIM Member, Spirit Lake Nation: We asked the medicine man, we said we want to get out of here. We don’t want to leave no weapons here. So, he says we’ll have a ceremony tonight and we’ll pray. So we prayed all night long.

Richard Whitman, Activist, Euchee and Pawnee Tribes: We sang the American Indian Movement song. An honor song. A memorial song.

Dennis Banks, Former AIM Leader, Ojibwa Tribe: (Singing AIM song)

Jim Robideau, Former AIM Member, Spirit Lake Nation: So, it started getting cloudy and then that evening, it started raining. Wind. Rain. So they couldn’t shoot the flares.

Arlene Means, Activist, Oglala Lakota Tribe: Lots of people walked out. The spirits had a lot to do with it. The one that brought us out was the owl. And every time he'd hoot in a direction and then we'd go that way and they did it right under the marshals’ noses.

Narrator: As the protesters fled Wounded Knee, a triumphant Dick Wilson toured the remains of the town.

Reporter (archival): Dick, are you surprised by what you’re seeing?

Dick Wilson (archival): I expected this.

Reporter (archival): Why?

Dick Wilson (archival): They’re hoodlums. Clowns. This is the way they live.

Narrator: Not only was Dick Wilson still firmly in charge, he would exact revenge on his opponents as the federal government looked the other way.

Dick Wilson (archival): The Oglalas don’t like what happened and if the FBI don’t get ‘em, the Oglalas will. We have our own way of punishing people that way.

Reporter (archival): Shooting on the reservation?

Dick Wilson (archival): You said it. We’ll take care of ‘em.

Steve Hendricks, Writer: It was a period of time that the dissidents called ‘The Reign of Terror.’ It was a time when Dick Wilson truly unleashed his forces on the folks who had supported Wounded Knee.

Narrator: In the three years following the siege, two FBI agents and more than 60 AIM supporters were killed, giving Pine Ridge the highest per capita murder rate in the country. As the reservation spiraled into violence, the government went after AIM in the courts.

Steve Hendricks, Writer: One thing that Wounded Knee gave the federal government an excuse to do was to try to litigate the American Indian Movement out of existence.

Senator Taylor (archival): You and your bunch of hoodlums take over down there, you destroy people’s property…

Narrator: Within months, more than 500 indictments were brought against AIM members, most on minor charges that were later dismissed.

Steve Hendricks, Writer: They succeeded in tying up AIM in court, and AIM at this point, with all those resources going into court, lost its way.

Narrator: AIM fell into disarray and violent infighting, and would never again have the impact it had in 1973. But the hopes inspired by the siege would echo in the decades to come. Despite the chaos that followed in its wake, Wounded Knee would prove to be a turning point in the history of Native people.

Madonna Thunder Hawk, Former AIM Member, Two Kettle Lakota: We needed to let the rest of the world know what was going on. Two states over, they had no idea about Indian people. We were just invisible. We were the ones that kicked the doors open on the Indian issue and let the world see.

Robert Warrior, Writer, Osage Nation: The good that came out of Wounded Knee was the entry into American Indian political life of people who had not been there before, who had not had a real voice. People learned they could tackle problems, create opportunities. And I think that coming out of Wounded Knee, people knew they could make a difference.

Ken Tiger, Former AIM Member, Seminole Tribe: There was a lot of sense of uh... we’re important and we can do something within our own people, our own tribe, our own homes. I didn’t go back to what I was doing before. I felt maybe I can do something to help, not only my people, but other people, too.

Narrator: Native activism would spur the revitalization of Native cultures.  In the years following the siege at Wounded Knee, Indians would create tribal schools and cultural institutions charged with preserving Indian traditions — and passing them on.

Paul Chaat Smith, Writer, Comanche Nation: In the late 60s and early 70s, these were still emerging ideas about reconnecting with traditional culture, language, religion that was starting to happen. But this became the majority sentiment in the space of just a handful of years. It was really about identity.  It was about affirming we’re still here, we want to be here, and we want to be here on our own terms.

John Trudell, Former AIM Leader, Santee Sioux Tribe: Whatever went on in the 60s and 70s, it’s an extension, it’s a continuation. It was no different than what King Phillip was about, or Crazy Horse was about. And whatever means and manner we-we could, since-since the Europeans arrived here, we’ve had to fight for our survival.

Charlotte Black Elk, Oglala Historian, Oglala Lakota Tribe: What the 1973 occupation did was people started saying ‘Hey, we’re Indians. It’s okay to be Indian. We are Indian, we really should be who we are.’ The struggle that we have in the 21st Century is to remain ourselves. Every one of us has to do our part to remain Lakota, to remain Indian — and to teach our children, to teach our grandchildren — and make sure that there will be children sitting in sweat lodge, standing at the sun dance in a thousand years.

Which of the following best explains how the diffusion of industrialization relates to the two images shown?

Which of the following best explains the relationship between GDP per capita and world system?

Which of the following explains the most significant weakness of Wallerstein's world system theory?