Original subtitles

At the beginning of the 19th century,

the western border of the United States

is the Mississippi river.

Beyond it lies French Louisiana,

a land that, for most Americans, is too vast to imagine,

too mysterious to comprehend.

But when president Thomas Jefferson buys it from Napoleon,

American explorers quickly seek out

its most valuable resource, animal furs.

As trappers and traders pursue their fortunes out west,

native Americans will be forced to fight

to preserve the riches of their homeland.

One daring mountain man named John colter

will get caught up in a clash of cultures,

forging a legend with a run for his life.

People live on myths.

And the myths that really stick in the American experience

are the myths of the west.

The mountains were taller, the deserts were harsher.

The snows were deeper.

American west conjures wonder, possibility, opportunity.

The figure of the mountain man.

Notorious outlaws.

The cowboy.

The discovery of gold in California.

This train of wagons trailing across the prairie.

Everybody has a reason for wanting this land.

But most of that land was already occupied.

We have been residents for more than 10,000 years.

But this is a clash of two different ways

of seeing life itself.

Fighting for the future of your homeland on the one side,

and fighting for the destiny

of the new republic on the other side.

The history of the west is a creation story.

It's the creation of what we think of as modern america.

The west is a place where anything is possible.

It is the essence of the American dream.

The core of this, is what are we to be as a nation?

The reckoning is coming.

The west is this canvas

on which American dreams become larger than life.

March 1803.

The United States is young.

It's been independent for just 20 years,

and its economy and infrastructure

are still in their infancy.

But the nation is growing fast.

Ohio has just entered the union as the 17th state.

The us population is 5.3 million, and rising 35% a year.

The majority of Americans are farmers.

And for president Thomas Jefferson,

the future of the republic rests on their shoulders.

To Jefferson's mind,

the ideal American citizen was a farmer

cultivating a small tract of land.

Jefferson saw the yeoman farmer

as almost a natural aristocrat.

And he was opposed to that inherited aristocracy

of Europe culture.

Jefferson also needs American farmers

to build the nation's economy,

but as more settlers move west,

the Mississippi river becomes increasingly vital

for trade and transport,

and it's vulnerable to foreign influence.

France has just taken over the lands

west of the Mississippi river.

Spain is down in Mexico, another threat.

The British are up north in Canada,

so you still have empires that are circling

around the United States or pressing in from all sides.

With so many potential European threats,

Jefferson needs to make sure American farmers

have free access to the Mississippi river

to ship their crops.

So he looks to acquire the port of New Orleans.

That's all Jefferson wants, control of the port city,

so we can control all of that produce going down river

and it'll be under American jurisdiction.

But Jefferson will have to bargain

with the leader of the French republic,

Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon has designs on a global empire,

which includes the western hemisphere,

but when slaves revolt in Haiti,

Napoleon finds himself in the midst of a quagmire.

His imperial goals are starting to fall apart.

He needs to finance this army

and he's looking for any way out that he can.

Jefferson sent his diplomats over to make an offer

for New Orleans, and that's when Napoleon said,

"well, I don't know about New Orleans.

Why don't you buy the whole thing?"

Napoleon offers to sell the United States

the entire territory of Louisiana,

a vast swath of land that stretches

from the Mississippi to the rockies.

828,000 square miles,

575 million acres for $15.6 million.

The greatest land sale in human history, 3 cents per acre,

doubling the size of our republic

with a single stroke of Jefferson's pen.

It's impossible for us to get our brains around this moment.

With France now gone

from the north American continent,

the United States is down one rival.

Now, its primary threat is its former colonial ruler,

Great Britain.

The treaty of Paris in 1783 settles the revolution

and the us thinks, "okay, we're free now.

We're free of British influence, we're our own people."

The British aren't thinking the same way.

They're looking to push over the us at any opportunity.

With their extensive network

of north American outposts, the British

run the most profitable fur trade in the world.

The fur trade, the trade in animal pelts

in the 17th and the 18th and 19th century,

was one of the greatest economic machines

in the entire western world.

In exchange for weapons and other goods,

native people trade valuable fur

such as fox, marten, mink, and sea otter,

which Europeans take overseas and sell at a markup.

The British had a tremendously developed

infrastructure in the fur trade.

It was easy to come down from Canada into

what was technically us territory

and take furs, or trade for furs.

Jefferson suspects the newly acquired

territory of Louisiana is filled with furs

and other valuable resources.

He asked congress to fund an expedition to explore the area.

He wants to know what's out there.

Various flora and fauna

and species of bird and fish, and he wants to know it all.

Jefferson tasks two army officers,

meriwether Lewis and William Clark,

with a mission to lead a corps of discovery

into Louisiana territory.

In may of 1804, they head west

from St. Louis on the Missouri river.

And the kind of young men who were capable

of doing this are like Navy seals.

The rest of us wouldn't last two days

on the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The party totals 45,

including scientists, photographers,

and several healthy young men

with exceptional survival skills.

Among them is 32-year-old John colter.

John colter is born in Virginia in the early 1770s

and he grows up on a farm

and has access to the great outdoors.

And spends a lot of time there

really learning his way around a forest.

John colter is the type of person

meriwether Lewis and William Clark were trying to recruit

for the corps of discovery.

Extraordinary endurance, incredible outdoor skills,

and ability to confront things in a spontaneous fashion,

and able to rendezvous at a very distant location.

And he had all of those things in spades.

When we think of, like, a natural in baseball

or a natural athlete, he was a natural mountain man.

He could read the land.

He had skills that most people don't have.

He had drive.

He is a person who is resistant

to the strictures of modern society,

of rules, of churches, of laws,

and he's gonna be much more comfortable

away from all that, out there in the wilderness.

To be part of a historic mission

that's authorized by the congress of the United States,

that had to be so intoxicating.

This is the moon mission.

This is a mission to Mars.

As the corps of discovery

heads deeper into this uncharted territory,

they experienced the harsh conditions

of the northern plains.

They also discover the fabled beauty of the land

and encounter the native nations who call it home.

The biggest misconception is that

the west was a virgin land.

They knew better,

and we certainly know better that it wasn't a virgin land,

it was a peopled land.

East of the Mississippi,

native nations are being pushed off their lands

by an onslaught of American settlers.

It's different in the west, as the corps discovers.

They are trying to collect not only scientific information,

but also diplomatic and military information

in order to be able to ascertain,

how hard is it going to be to get control of this place,

or the many places that different peoples inhabit.

They require a tremendous amount

of help from native peoples.

They had, among their party, the frenchman,

who knew some of the native peoples,

and his wife that everyone knows as sacagawea.

Serving as a guide and translator,

sacagawea will prove invaluable to the mission.

So much so that Lewis and Clark name a river in her honor.

Oftentimes, it's connections with Indians that are crucial

because if Indians don't want you there,

you're not gonna last long there.

Throughout the expedition's first year,

Lewis and Clark encounter numerous tribes

across the northern plains.

John colter proves his word.

John colter turns out to be really good

interacting with native Americans,

and bartering with them, and getting information from them.

He's also really good at navigating his way

through wilderness.

And so whenever there's a job to be done

to send somebody a hundred miles

on a journey to do something,

they pick John colter because he can do it

and he can find his way back.

Lewis and Clark task colter

with finding a lost member of the corps.

They send him on scouting missions

and he quickly gains a reputation

as one of the most skilled hunters in the party.

I mean, just imagine what it was like

to be alone, danger every day,

have no idea what you're going to encounter.

He became a professional man of the west.

As the corps makes its way up the Missouri river,

colter can't help but notice the abundance

of a particular animal.

All the way up,

they're seeing more and more and more beaver

and he, like others, on the corps of discovery are thinking

that there's wealth to be had here.

Beaver are such unique species

because their hair is so dense on their hide

and it makes it extremely soft, very durable,

and so it became extremely popular for top hats

during the 19th century.

Beaver fur becomes one of the hot commodities,

essentially the gold of the early 19th century.

So, the person that can acquire beaver pelts

is sitting on a fortune.

By the summer of 1806,

the corps of discovery is finally headed back

towards St. Louis.

Over the course of two years,

they've made an incredible 8,000 mile round trip voyage

mapping not only the Louisiana territory

but vast areas of the pacific northwest.

Their discoveries of rivers, mountains,

native nations, plants, and animals

create a catalog of the west

drawn in detail in the journals of Lewis and Clark.

So they get beyond the yellow stone river.

They're this close to St. Louis

and they encounter the first white men they have seen

for a very, very long time.

Their names are for rest Hancock and Joseph dicks on.

They've had a rough time of it

and now they're in hopes of repairing their fortunes

by trapping beaver.

One of the most beaver-rich areas in the entire nation

was around the headwaters of the Missouri river,

and that's where colter had just come from

with the Lewis and Clark expedition.

And so he's one of the very few white men

to have actually been to that place.

Hancock and dicks on, they asked the captains,

"is there anyone among you who might be willing

to come back with us

to serve as a kind of guide or companion?"

And Lewis and Clark think, are you nuts?

You know, we're just weeks from home.

Of course no one's gonna turn back.

And colter steps forward and says, "I'll do it.

I wanna do it.

I wanna go back."

So in the fall of 1806,

John colter turns back to the west

while the rest of the corps of discovery heads home.

They have been out of contact

with American society for nearly two years.

Because they were gone so long,

people just assumed that they too had perished.

And so, when they finally show up in St. Louis,

it's like they came back from the dead.

"Here we are!"

As news of their return spreads,

Lewis and Clark become national celebrities.

Americans savor their detailed accounts

of the wild frontier and its riches.

Meriwether Lewis writes this very reassuring

letter to president Jefferson.

"The west abounds with essentially

infinite numbers of beaver.

"This resource is unlimited."

For president Jefferson,

this discovery presents an incredible opportunity,

a chance to compete with the British in the fur trade.

A handful of American trappers are already making their way

up the Missouri river, including John colter.

And colter turns back with Hancock and dicks on

and goes up to the mouth of the yellow stone.

He knows its unlimited wealth

if you can really harvest this.

By the early 1800s, the idea in america

that one can come from very humble circumstances

and through hard work and a little bit of luck,

one can elevate themselves up to a higher class.

That has been firmly entrenched after 200 years of colonization.

And so people like John colter are imbued with that idea

that even though I'm born to humble circumstances,

I can get into the fur trade.

And if I work hard and I apply myself,

I can become fabulously wealthy.

As John colter leads dicks on and Hancock

up the Missouri river,

the winter of 1806 is about to set in.

He knows if he wants to survive,

he'll have to find native allies.

So he sets up camp near the crow.

Crow people in the 19th century were located

all along both sides of the yellow stone river.

We occupied an area that was about 40 million acres in size.

Crow people are not hung up on race politics.

They are welcoming of anyone

who wants to come and share their community.

They're opening their doors to them

and John colter is one of those people.

He knows how to speak plain sign language.

Once a person could learn how to use this language,

then they were able to communicate

with any tribe on the northern or southern plains.

Colter comes in and he's gaining

hundreds, thousands of years

of local knowledge from these tribes.

Every plant that he's looking at on the ground

is something that the crows can identify as something

that's either edible or useful in some utilitarian way.

But some native nations don't want Americans

trapping on their lands.

The black feet are strongly opposed

to American fur traders coming up the Missouri river

into black feet territory, and many of those fur traders

ended up paying with their lives.

The black feet were feared by

their native American neighbors like the crow,

and they transmitted this fear to

the white folks that came on.

Watch out for the black feet.

By the early 1800s, the black feet had been trading

with the British-owned Hudson's bay company for decades,

making them one of the most heavily armed tribes

on the northern plains.

But while the British respect the blackfeet's sovereignty,

Americans are using their lands without permission.

The black feet made a lot of mountain men retire.

They have been on the northern plains thousands of years

and they control, militaristically,

the entire northern portion of Montana,

probably for several hundred miles.

This is their sovereign homeland

and suddenly, these people from outside are in,

no license, no negotiation,

just coming in, killing stuff and and taking it out.

The black feet rightly understand that this is a threat.

John colter has found allies

in the blackfeet's fiercest rivals, the crow,

who show colter where it's safe to trap

and which places to avoid.

But even with some help, the work is relentless.

The beaver fur is thickest

and most valuable in the middle of winter.

And in order to set the traps

and to retrieve the beaver, if they do get trapped,

you have to go in the water

in absolutely freezing temperatures.

And if you get wet and it's really cold,

you can freeze to death very quickly.

Colter makes it through the long winter,

but the harsh conditions prove too much for his partners.

I think Hancock and dicks on

really don't have the right stuff.

They knew it, that's why they asked for help.

And so he finally gives up on them.

Colter leaves Hancock and dicks on

with all the provisions.

By the spring of 1807,

he's on his way back down the Missouri river,

defeated and alone.

But in the west, opportunity is never far away.

This time, he gets all the way

to the mouth of the platte river.

So he's just days from St. Louis now,

and he meets Manuel Lisa.

Now, Lisa a spaniard.

He is a very ambitious and driven man

and he is leading a large group

up to the yellow stone country

to do industrial extraction of beaver.

Colter discovers that there are several members

of his friends in Manuel Lisa's expedition

and he agrees to work for Manuel Lisa.

And colter turns back again.

So, this means he can't get it out of his system.

There's something so compelling in the west

that he overcomes his caution again and again and again,

very nearly to the point of death.

By the early 1800s,

British Canadian fur trade has been going strong

for nearly two centuries

and the United States is just beginning to catch up.

In the us, I mean, they're kind of hobbling along

on horses and hauling boats up rivers with ropes,

compared to this very efficient British fur trade.

Our image of the fur trade during this period

is dominated by these romantic fascinating characters,

the mountain men, and they were obviously,

they were sort of the working force of it,

but all of this was run by larger businesses.

The British have already established

major fur trading outposts in Canada,

such as the Hudson's bay company,

employing hundreds of trappers

and generating a hefty stream of revenue.

By contrast, the American great plains

has nothing of the sort

until Manuel Lisa ventures up the Missouri river.

Manuel Lisa will be the first to establish

a trading post there.

This is a place that traders can trade their furs

and their wares all year,

where native Americans can come

and engage in commerce as well.

So it becomes an important economic driver

in this long move toward the settlement of the west.

Manuel Lisa creates his trade fort

at the mouth of the big horn.

So in the heart of absaroka crow country.

It's in their interest to be on good terms with the crow.

Colter's experience with the crow

makes him the perfect man to head up trade relations

with the local tribes.

Manuel Lisa wants colter to go around

and inform the different tribes

that there's going be a new trading post,

that they're welcome to come there

and trade with their hides.

And so this is gonna be a new costco

or Walmart on the northern plains.

If you'd said to him, "what do you have to have?"

He would've said, "powder, ball, rifle, hatchet, knife.

Beyond that, I can make do,

I can make moccasins, I can make clothes,

I can butcher animals."

Colter's exploration

of the upper yellow stone is legendary.

He makes his way west of the wind river range

into what we know of as the yellow stone caldera.

He experiences the geysers, he sees the hot pools.

He's encountering these things

that only indigenous people would've known.

And so in that way, it's like discovering a new continent.

As colter lays the groundwork

for Lisa's trading post known as fort Raymond,

he helps to create the first commercial infrastructure

for this region of the American west.

This is what Thomas Jefferson has been hoping for,

but his vision doesn't stop there.

To him, the fur trade in the northern plains

is a gateway to the pacific coast.

So in these years, the very early 1800s,

the west coast is really unclaimed territory.

Technically, Spain's up as far as San Francisco,

you have Russian fur traders way up in Alaska.

And then between those Russian fur posts

in Alaska and San Francisco, you have

2,000 miles of unclaimed coast in the northwest.

This is an incredible resource in both land and in furs,

and britain knows it, and the us knows it.

The British and the Americans eventually end up

in a fur trading arms race, so to speak,

to extract as quickly as they can

the remaining furs across most of western North America.

But as American trade networks

advance towards the rockies,

it causes turmoil among the native nations.

A lot of these tribes have agreements.

They're peaceful with one another.

As pioneers and other Americans move westward,

tribes steadily lose land and resources,

and that causes conflict amongst them.

The rivalry between the crow and the black feet

has been building for decades.

Fights over territory and horses are common.

But the latest sticking point

is Manuel Lisa's trading fort.

The crow are benefiting because now they're getting

rifle and shot,

they're getting kettles, and handkerchiefs, and beads,

and all the things that they want and can use.

And so they like this arrangement.

But the black feet know that the fort means one thing,

more Americans trespassing on their lands.

And it's not long before John colter

finds himself caught in the fray.

As John colter returns from his thousand-mile trek

in the spring of 1808,

he passes through the middle of a generational conflict

between two native nations,

the crow and their rivals, the black feet.

When colter leaves fort Manuel Lisa in 1808

and makes his way to the west,

he comes into a group of crow hunter gatherers

and he joins their group.

And they encounter a very large contingent of black feet,

and there's a battle.

Colter's part of the crow world.

He's naturally gonna fight with the crow.

In the ensuing clash, John colter,

he's a really good shot,

so he ends up killing a number of black feet warriors

before getting wounded himself in the leg.

Wounded and bleeding, colter hikes the long trail,

through the snow, back to fort Raymond.

But his bravery has left its Mark on the black feet.

When you talk about plains Indian warfare

at the time that John colter was engaged in it,

it was pretty close up.

It was pretty personal style of fighting

so people could see you.

They would remember what you looked like.

And so, if he fought against black feet in 1808,

it's likely that they remembered who he was

and that they could identify him.

But as he recovers at fort Raymond,

the allure of the wilderness is too great for him to resist,

and he's already planning his next move.

While colter is convalescing,

he sees all kind of trappers coming into the fort with fur

and making really good money.

And it starts to gnaw at him

because he's an exceptional trapper,

he knows how to do this.

So colter heals up from his injury

and like any good cowboy,

he wants to get back up on that horse.

Meanwhile, a wealthy entrepreneur in New York

also has his eyes on the fur trade

with grand ambitions to corner the market.

Well, John Jacob astor was born in Germany

in modest circumstances.

He comes to america as a teenager,

he hears talk about this lucrative fur trade.

So what does he do?

He gets to New York and he goes into a furrier,

and he learns everything he can about the trade,

and then somehow goes out on his own

and eventually becomes the first

multimillionaire in america.

Jefferson gets a letter from John Jacob astor

and the letter says to Jefferson,

"I have a plan for capturing

the entire fur wealth of North America."

And Jefferson says, "who is this guy?

Come on down to the white house, let's talk."

In the summer of 1808,

astor goes to Washington to meet the president

and lays out his plans.

He'll set up a network of trading posts

all the way from the Missouri river to the pacific coast,

where he'll establish an outpost

to link the American fur trade with Asia,

Alaska, and beyond.

It's this grand vision

and they've come out all pumped out of this meeting

and Jefferson says, "I will help you in any way I can."

Well, of course, this'll help them

crush britain in the fur trade.

But astor's not the only one

looking to make his fortune in the fur trade.

In the fall of 1808, colter decides

to embark on another trapping expedition.

Competition for furs has never been greater,

but colter has an advantage.

He knows the terrain, he knows the tribes,

and he alone knows where to find

the densest population of beaver,

right in the middle of black feet territory.

When fur trappers first came to black feet country,

the black feet told them, "don't hunt these beavers here

or we're gonna chase you out of here."

A lot of fur trappers decided that they were gonna go ahead

and trap anyway,

and a lot of them didn't have very good results.

Colter is aware that they are in the territory

that is patrolled by the black feet tribe,

which makes it a very perilous venture.

But he knows his prospects are great

and if he gets out there,

he can do well and maybe make his fortune.

Colter decides to go in with a partner,

someone he already trusts, and he chooses John potts,

his former canoe mate from the corps of discovery.

Colter suggests to potts that they do most of their trapping

and most of their setting and cleaning of traps at night,

under the cover of darkness.

And so it works for a while.

They managed to stay out of the black purview there

and trap quite a few beavers for several months.

And so one morning while the sun is coming up,

they are setting and repairing traps

and they hear in the distance this thunderous roar,

which they first think might be

just a herd of buffalo passing by.

That's when they encounter a very large contingent

of very angry black feet.

Colter and potts are on the river in their boat

fixing beaver traps,

when a large group of black feet warriors

appears on the banks of the river

and motions them to come ashore.

John colter realizes there's no escape.

It's totally pointless.

Hey, wait, wait, wait.

And colter is ready to go ashore

because that's what they're asking him to do.

Potts, on the other hand, immediately hesitant.

And actually, potts picks up his rifle

and aims at the black feet group.

The black feet unleashed a barrage of arrows on potts

and he was killed in pretty short order.

They bring potts to the shore and they dismember him.

They butcher him in front of colter.

Colter listens to the black feet as they adjudicate

and decide what they're gonna do with him,

and he's familiar with them

and they seem to be familiar with him.

He's pretty sure he is a dead man,

but willing to see if he can maybe find a way out of this.

They strip him,

including his moccasins.

And he listens in

as the black feet elders make a decision.

Then they report to him,

we're giving you a chance to survive.

They're speaking to him in sign language, telling him,

we'll let you know when you can start running.

He starts running as fast as he can across this plain.

It's a flat plain but it's covered in prickly pear

and all sorts of other things that are slicing up his feet.

Colter may be running for his life,

but the black feet are defending their homeland

from the ever encroaching Americans.

This is not just an opportunity

to get revenge against John colter.

This is actually part of a wider effort by native Americans,

by the black feet here to resist what they see now

as white seizure of resources

that native Americans have depended on.

Colter knows that his only hope of survival

is to make it to a fort.

He's got six miles of open territory to traverse

and then, he's still 200 miles away from the nearest fort.

Blood was gushing out of his nose and mouth,

his lungs were bursting.

His feet were so badly damaged

that the pain was just absolutely excruciating.

At a certain point, he's winded.

He turns around to see his progress

and realizes that most of the warriors are far behind him.

But there's one that's right on his tail.

John colter wheels around.

And his appearance apparently shocks this black foot Indian

because he's covered in blood.

And colter somehow manages to wrest the spear from him,

and stab him with it and kill him.

There's no time to savor the victory

because he's got hundreds of other warriors hot on his tail.

And heads as fast as he can to a river nearby.

Jumps in the river, begins to swim down river,

trying to get away from the warriors who are in hot pursuit.

He eventually comes to a cluster of fallen timbers,

logs that have been probably

chopped down by beavers upstream.

If he can get underneath this pile of logs

and find an air pocket, he might be undetectable.

Colter gets under it in such a way

that he can get his nose and mouth

just above the water line.

And he waits in ice cold water.

Eventually, the black feet arrive.

You're cold, you're alone, you're bruised.

I don't know what he's thinking,

but I'm pretty sure he was thinking,

"this is the last day of my life."

John colter's there in the freezing cold water

under this pile of logs.

He's badly damaged.

He's totally exhausted.

The black feet, they're still searching for him.

All day, they were moving back and forth,

gotta be here somewhere.

The black feet become incensed

at not being able to find him and leave him alone.

And he waits.

Finally, he's alone

and he carefully crawls out from the river,

and begins to walk 200 miles to the nearest fort.

He has nothing to eat, so he survives by eating bark

and by eating roots.

Colter learned how to harvest wild plants

from the crow Indians.

All colter really needed to survive was a digging stick.

He eventually gets to fort Raymond.

Sometimes in his telling, 7 days, sometimes 11 days,

but an incredible journey.

When colter reaches the fort,

he's so emaciated and dirty

that his peers don't even recognize him.

He recovers and continues his adventures for two more years,

but after a few more close calls with the black feet,

he finally decides to call it quits.

In 1810, he returns to St. Louis where he marries

and builds a small cabin by the Missouri river,

next to Daniel Boone and his family.

He soon gets a chance to share his unparalleled knowledge

with the entire nation.

In 1811, colter encounters a group of explorers

on their way up the Missouri river.

John Jacob astor's overland expedition,

which is headed to the pacific coast

to set up a trading fort.

John colter tells his story to the astor people,

among whom is a trained British scientist,

botanist by the name of John bradbury,

who writes down colter's story

about being chased by the black feet word for word.

And that's the definitive source of the John colter story.

Colter's tale quickly spreads,

becoming a popular frontier legend by the 1830s,

but with each retelling, there are variations.

And while he surely escaped the black feet,

his story serves a purpose.

I've always believed that the black feet

wanted colter to survive that run.

They want to be feared, they want to be respected,

and here's an opportunity for them

to send that message loud and clear through a legend.

No matter which way you look at it,

John colter is an amazing human being.

Anyone who goes through Montana naked

for 200 miles deserves a medal.

John colter is instrumental in creating

this mythical image of the westerner, the mountain man

that becomes a fixture in American culture

so that in decades later,

kit Carson will fill dime novels

with stories of his exploits.

Teddy Roosevelt, even though he was born in Manhattan

and goes to Harvard, goes out west

and does a little dabbling in cattle.

And next thing you know, Teddy Roosevelt is this icon

of the American west.

But after colter's story,

most Americans will avoid black feet territory,

reshaping the path to the west.

It seems surprising

that individuals off on their own

can be agents of historical change,

but that's essentially what the mountain men

become over time.

John colter and mountain men like him

are really the spearhead of the westward movement

because they learned from the tribes where the passes were,

where the trails were, where the rivers were,

how to navigate the landscape.

And then in turn, the mountain men passed that knowledge on

to the white settlers.

John Jacob astor's expedition sets up a fur trading post

at the mouth of the Columbia river in the spring of 1811,

naming it fort astoria.

For the us, it's a claim to the pacific northwest,

and despite the war with britain that erupts in 1812,

the two nations agree to share control of the region.

In the decades that follow,

American fur trappers and traders

will seek out the riches in what will become Oregon,

with native nations as their trading partners.

But a new kind of migrant will follow on their heels.

Christian missionaries will come to convert native peoples

and transform their way of life.