Original subtitles

From the first days that it became a nation,

the United States has looked to expand its borders.

In the early 1800s, American settlers move west

into territories gained from the Louisiana purchase,

creating the states of Louisiana,

Missouri, and Arkansas,

while forcing native nations off their homelands.

But when they push into Texas in the early 1830s,

they must confront a native power

that's dominated the southern plains

for the last hundred years.

A nine-year-old girl, Cynthia Ann Parker

will find her herself at the center of a battle

to control the heart of the continent,

fought between three bitter rivals,

the us, Mexico, and the comanche.

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 had 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.

Three decades after independence,

the United States has almost doubled

in both size and population.

The original 13 states now number 17

and are home to five million Americans

and 600,000 indigenous people.

Most of the land the United States

doesn't occupy in North America,

is claimed by great britain or Spain.

But on the southern great plains,

the 300-year-old Spanish empire is struggling

against an unexpected threat to its power.

Long before the Europeans arrived in North America,

there have been Indians living on the plains.

And among those peoples were the comanches.

If you were to take a snapshot of them in let's say,

the year 1600 or 1500,

they would've been a small tribe.

You would've described them as nomadic hunter-gatherers.

Then sometime around 1625,

something happened to turn this very sort of minor

and somewhat insignificant player on the plains

into the single most powerful force on the plains.

That was the arrival of the horse.

With the Spanish, the horse arrives

in the late 16th century,

and the tribe that knows what to do with it

more than anybody else is the comanches.

The horse is what enabled for comanches to be able to go

and to build up this thing

that now historians are calling an empire.

With the help of the horse,

the comanche become master buffalo hunters.

Buffalo became even more essential

to the comanche culture and way of living

than it had been before

because they're not growing crops,

they're living off the buffalo.

Experts estimate that there was

as many as 30 million buffalo, huge herds.

You could stand still

and it would take hours for them to pass.

The buffalo were everything,

for sustenance, for shelter, the teepees,

the hides, clothing.

The buffalo is a life source.

Chasing down buffalo from horseback,

the comanche learned to fire arrows

with deadly accuracy at a full gallop,

a skill they bring to warfare

as they shield themselves behind the neck of the horse.

Their abilities to fight from horseback

were things that people had never seen before.

They had been called

the most effective and formidable light cavalry

in the history of human warfare.

And they became the scourge of the plains.

They're blowing tribes off of the southern plains

left and right.

They drove navajos and apaches nearly to extinction.

The comanche fiercely protect

their hunting grounds from all potential threats,

above all, the Spanish.

They would raid settlements and steal horses,

and raiding became a way of life.

The comanches,

they're the most successful expansionist power

on the great plains.

They're the ones

who are the most successful empire builders.

By the mid 1750s,

the comanche have halted Spanish expansion in its tracks.

With a population of 40,000,

their empire dominates an area larger than France,

some 250,000 square miles known as comancheria.

This comanche empire doesn't look like European empires.

It doesn't have a central authority.

They were broken down into bands,

but it has its own policies,

its own economic strategies, its own foreign policy,

as they work together to dominate this area.

And if you were in comancheria,

you were liable to be raided upon

and perhaps killed by the comanches almost at any moment.

As its north American empire

is under assault from comanche raids,

Spanish power in north america is in decline.

In 1821, after an 11-year rebellion,

Mexico wins independence

along with all of Spain's north American lands.

That includes the province of tejas, or Texas,

about 3/4 of which is now in comancheria.

To safeguard Texas against comanche raiding,

the new Mexican rulers look to create a human shield,

with American settlers.

In the 1820s, the Americans have been invited in.

And so Americans are moving to a foreign country

because they're gonna get free land, thousands of acres.

It's this incredibly fertile land,

and they come in by droves,

and they create a buffer against the comanches.

These Americans,

they've dealt with cherokees and chick a saw Indians,

so they think they know what Indians are.

No big deal.

And so there's a land rush,

as there will later be gold rushes in the American west.

Over the next 15 years,

more than 30,000 settlers moved to Texas

looking for opportunity and fertile land.

Among them, the Parker family.

The Parkers came to Texas

because they weren't particularly well off

and so they couldn't buy land

where land had gotten expensive.

They start in Virginia and they migrate to Illinois,

and they end up in Texas in 1833.

Land is wealth and Mexico gave the Parker men

a 16,000-acre parcel of nice rolling Savanna

that's just beyond your wildest dreams.

And they build fort Parker like a military compound

on the very edge of comanche country.

Arriving with 38 members of the extended Parker family

is nine-year-old Cynthia Ann.

Cynthia Ann's got three brothers and sisters

and her parents are god-fearing baptists.

They believe god has already willed what is going to happen

and they make their life.

To the Indians, as long as Americans are passing through,

they are useful trading partners.

But once Americans start to settle in places,

that's usually when conflict ensues.

The Parkers live out on the frontier,

so they're taking the risk.

Maybe you'll survive, maybe you won't.

While the comanche are a threat to American settlers,

it's the Americans who are now a threat to Mexico.

Mexico's outlawed slavery in 1829,

but many of the settlers who were attracted to Mexico come

for the raising of cotton

and other slavery-dependent commodities,

and they bring their slaves with them.

This is gonna create a conflict between Mexico

and its invited guests from the United States.

And by 1836, Americans in Texas revolt

in the name of independence from Mexico.

After a bloody six-month war,

including the loss of some 200 Americans at the alamo,

texan forces led by Sam Houston

defeat Mexican troops at San jacinto.

Houston's rallying cry,

"remember the alamo," enflames his troops

earning victory in just 18 minutes.

Texas declares independence from Mexico on march 2nd, 1836,

and looks to join the United States.

Texas wants to come into the union,

but the United States says, no, you can't come in,

because northerners don't wanna have any more slave states.

So Texas becomes this independent republic.

And so they fly this lone star flag.

There's no American federal power

because Texas has not come in as a state.

And so these settlers are out

on the absolute edge of the frontier

with no protection of any kind around them.

So who is it that's going to be getting hit

by comanche attacks?

It's going to be settlers.

If you're a comanche back in the 1830s,

and if suddenly a huge family,

20 people or so showing up in my backyard

and then they set up camp,

several months go by and they're still there,

what choice do you have?

On a bright may morning in 1836,

a group of comanche, led by a young chief named peta no con a,

rides up to the Parker fort.

Comanches have come up with a white flag.

Cynthia Ann's uncle Benjamin goes out to talk with them.

They say they want water.

But uncle Benjamin notes

that their horses are dripping wet

having just come out of the spring,

so they can't really want water.

Suddenly, all hell breaks loose.

It's obviously a killing raid.

The comanches stabbed Cynthia Ann's uncle Benjamin

and scalp him while still alive.

What happens next is one of the most significant events

in the history of the American west.

Now, the killing starts.

The fort itself was a very strong defense

in case any enemy came at you,

but the Parkers have left their gate open.

And that's a problem.

This quick scene of violence, it's all about death.

Five members of the Parker family are killed

and four are taken captive,

including Cynthia Ann and her cousin, Rachel plummer.

This brutal raid marks the beginning

of one of the longest and bloodiest conflicts

in American history,

the 40-year fight against the comanche.

Cynthia Ann Parker,

my great-great-great-grandmother was, I believe, nine

when she was captured.

There's this perception that the comanche take captives

because they're interested in ransoming them off,

but in reality, the comanche are also interested

in assimilating their captives.

This increases the strength of the tribe itself.

The Parkers are just a few

of the hundreds of captives taken by the comanche

in the early 1800s.

Many never see their families again.

Comanches would capture the children

to be incorporated into the tribe

to become comanche men, comanche women.

Her captors take Cynthia Ann

deep into comanche-controlled land.

Her family tries to find her,

but she's beyond the reach of American power.

Then after two years of searching,

they find her cousin Rachel plummer and buy her back.

Rachel is 21 when she was returned to her family

after two years of captivity.

The most telling detail about

what captivity must have been like

is that her striking red hair had turned gray.

And she publishes a memoir of her captivity.

They commenced whipping and beating me

with clubs, so that my flesh was never well

from bruises and wounds during my captivity.

Often did the children cry,

but were soon hushed by such blows

that I had no idea they could survive.

Rachel plummer's narrative of her time in captivity

becomes a big, big bestseller.

It has elements of true crime,

elements of a world that one can't possibly imagine.

Rachel's memoir makes it clear to people

that there are extraordinary dangers in the west.

And we're seeing a world that is scary,

we're seeing a world that is filled with violence.

And now, anybody who didn't know about

Cynthia Ann Parker and the Parkers, knows it now.

By 1838,

Cynthia Ann has been missing for over two years

and the story of her cousin Rachel plummer

prompts fear and outrage across america.

Yet armed settlers from the us continue pouring into lands

claimed by the new Texas republic,

but controlled by the comanche.

You can't really overstate

the amount of land the texans of this new republic

were giving out.

And once you surveyed it, it was yours.

The comanche recognized that

surveyors are the advanced guard of settlement.

And so surveyors are killed left and right.

Then it became the most hazardous profession in america.

As the comanche raids continue

and more captives are taken,

the first president of the republic of Texas,

Sam Houston, promotes peace.

As a teenager,

he spent three years living with the cherokee

and was sympathetic toward native Americans.

But texans want war.

And in December of 1838, they vote him out,

in favor of his vice president

who commanded the cavalry during the Texas revolution.

Mirabeau Lamar became president of Texas in 1838

and it became very clear

that this was one of the meanest people

in the state of Texas,

and most of the meanness was directed at Indians.

He has a famous phrase

that describes his policy towards Indians.

"Expulsion or extinction."

As thousands of American settlers claim land

in the republic of Texas,

their aggressive policy towards native peoples,

"expulsion or extinction,"

is shared by the president of the United States,

Andrew Jackson.

Andrew Jackson wanted to have white settlers

able to have free access to land in the southern states.

By the Indian removal act of 1830,

tens of thousands of native Americans

are taken away from their lands and forced to go west.

But in 1838, the comanches are still free

and attacking settlers across the southern plains.

The new president of the Texas republic, mirabeau Lamar,

not only vows to get rid of them,

he promises to recover all their captives.

And knows the perfect men for the job,

the Texas rangers.

The Texas rangers were famous for giving no quarter.

The rangers began in 1823 as a force of 10 men

hired to protect American settlers

in what was then Mexican Texas.

They are volunteers repaid for their bravery with land.

When Texas gains its independence,

the rangers grow to 300 men, and even more are needed.

Jack hays, at 23 years old, is just the type of recruit

that the Texas rangers are looking for.

He's a formidable Indian fighter.

He's very adept with a pistol.

The rangers are all under 30 and fearless,

but their firepower is still no match for the comanche.

They've only got three shots.

They've got the Kentucky long rifle.

One, and they've got two single shot pistols.

Their second problem is they're afoot,

against Indians who can discharge arrows at this rate,

mounted on fast horses.

Now who do you think wins those fights?

But in the late 1830s, the comanche are facing a threat

that's deadlier than any weapon.

The arrival of European diseases

were catastrophic for native populations.

Smallpox kills 90 of the Indians for one of the whites.

In 1839, the comanches have been devastated

by a sweeping epidemic of smallpox.

It's reduced their population almost by half.

And that's what compels some of the comanche to attend

the council house in Texas with the Texas rangers

which is gonna be an attempt to exchange dozens of captives

and achieve some measure of peace.

The comanches bring only one white captive

by the name of Matilda Lockhart.

The white soldiers are saying, but we want all the captives.

And chief mukwooru he's saying,

it doesn't work that way.

The texans will not accept

that a comanche leader from one band

cannot speak for another.

As tensions rise,

the 12 comanche leaders who came to make peace

are provoked into a fight and shot dead.

23 more comanche are killed in a street battle.

The news travels quickly,

and the comanche payback is merciless.

Surviving comanche leaders get together

and build a force of about 1,500 seasoned warriors,

and they are gonna seek vengeance on white settlers

all across southern Texas.

The raid of 1840 is like no other in history.

Comanche bands unite for a 200-mile rampage

that slices through the heart of Texas

to the Gulf of Mexico.

They plunder two cities,

slaughter cattle, and make off with 3,000 horses,

two dozen scalps, and a half a dozen captives.

They burn the coastal town of linville to the ground.

But technology is about to turn the tide against them.

Samuel Colt is one of the great early entrepreneurs

in industrial technology in American history.

He just so happens to focus on firearms.

Back in 1836,

22-year-old Colt patented a new invention,

a repeating pistol that can fire five times

in under 30 seconds, a major upgrade from rifles

that can take a minute to load just one shot.

Jack hays, the first great ranger,

immediately understood that this could transform

warfare in the American west.

So he gets the rangers drilling on horseback.

They are doing exactly what the comanches are doing

except they're doing it with a different type of weapon.

The Colt six shooter fast

becomes part of the brand of the Texas rangers.

The Americans know without any question

that this is going to be the key to taking the west.

By 1844, nearly a decade has passed

since Cynthia Ann Parker disappeared without a trace.

But out of the blue,

an Indian agent claims to have seen her.

She's now living as a comanche.

She was covered in buffalo grease,

not unlike other Indian women.

She is now called naduah,

which means one who was found,

or one who keeps the family warm.

She has been married for a number of years to peta no con a,

a chief who was among the comanches who captured her.

They have two sons, quanah and pecos.

And a daughter by the name of topsannah.

The Indian agent tries to buy back Cynthia Ann,

but she refuses to leave.

This was an astounding revelation

to people in the frontier.

It was a shock that she wouldn't return.

They say that she had sort of gone over to the dark side.

White civilization freaked out.

Let's imagine what it's like to be

an American settler woman in the 1830s.

It's just bone grinding work.

And you're also in a very patriarchal culture.

By comparison,

being a member of a tribe was a world of freedom

for some of these captives.

She didn't want to come back.

The tribe didn't want to give her up,

her husband didn't want to give her up.

Cynthia Ann is not going anywhere.

It's 1844, an election year,

and the hottest political topic

is whether or not to annex Texas, a slave-holding republic.

The United States congress is deeply divided on the issue.

Westward expansion exacerbates the issue of slavery,

because there had always been this delicate balance

in america at that time

between those who were opposed to the extension of slavery

and those who were interested in expanding slavery.

James polk runs for president on the Democratic ticket

and says that the united states is going to annex Texas,

and all of Oregon, and he wins.

Then at that point, it tips the balance in congress.

On December 29th, 1845,

president polk formally welcomes

a new slave state into the union,

Texas,

deepening the nation's growing divide over slavery.

But with this addition,

polk sees yet another opportunity for us expansion.

When president James k. Polk takes office,

he quickly sends a large contingent of American soldiers

down to the us-Mexico border

with the intention of provoking

a clash with Mexican soldiers.

And lo and behold, that is precisely what happens,

and that becomes the pretext

for us declaring war on Mexico.

The Mexican war can only be described

as a war of naked imperial expansion and land grab.

It has no justification of any sort.

There's a lot of brutality in it.

Two years later, the Mexican war ends in 1848

and the United States gains an enormous new territory,

out of which a number of states will be carved.

Principally California, Arizona, new Mexico, Utah,

and part of Colorado.

Polk's victory over Mexico

gives the us 1.2 million square miles of new land,

an instant 66% increase to its territory,

that extends its boundary to the pacific coast.

And to ensure the land is open for American settlement,

congress passes the Indian appropriations act in 1851,

creating the reservation system.

The government claims

it will contain and protect the indigenous people

from American settlers moving west.

But many native American tribes,

including the comanche, fight back.

Peta no con a began a series

of horrifically violent comanche raids.

The worst of the raids are

in the county named after Cynthia Ann's uncle,

Parker county.

To the comanche,

peta no con a is revered as a powerful protector.

But to texans,

he's a violent terrorist that's scaring off settlers.

In December of 1860, us cavalryman sul Ross teams up

with Texas ranger, Charles goodnight

to track down no con a and take him out.

They locate a comanche supply depot.

They think this is where they're gonna find peta no con a.

The camp was mostly just women and children.

The men are out hunting.

But they attack anyway.

It's not a fair fight.

But one of them,

actually turns out to be Cynthia Ann Parker,

who turns at the moment where she's about to be killed

and holds up her small child.

And at first, they just assumed

she's another comanche to be killed.

And when they got up close to her,

and they saw the blue eyes, they're like, who is this?

They soon realize

this is the long-lost famous comanche captive,

the white woman that people across the country

were hearing about.

Cynthia Ann Parker, now 33 years old,

does not want to leave the comanche.

But once again, she's taken captive by an enemy,

this time with her baby daughter, topsannah.

The fate of her husband, peta no con a, is lost to history.

The Texas rangers assume that her only desire

is to be rescued and taken back

into the the world of her childhood.

Cynthia Ann and topsannah are reunited

with their white relatives, the Parkers,

who insist they give up their comanche ways,

and learn the scriptures.

Soon after her capture,

the Parker family parades her through town

in western style clothes.

Crowds flock to stare at her.

They're doing all of this to be able

to make a presentation to the world, to the family,

that this can work.

She got held up in white society

as celebratory, as justice, as finally coming home.

She was rescued by the rangers.

But this was no rescue.

Cynthia Ann is devastated being returned to white society.

It is not where she wants to be.

These people are strangers to her now.

She is basically held there under duress.

She tries to escape back to the comanches.

And they keep bringing her back to Texas civilization.

She's just despondent.

She's lost almost everything,

and she doesn't know what to do.

It's 1860 when Cynthia Ann Parker is "rescued"

and returned to her white kin.

That same year,

Abraham Lincoln of Illinois is elected to the presidency.

His election immediately touches off the civil war.

At the start of Lincoln's presidency,

only a quarter of families in Texas owned slaves.

But a majority of texan voters support

breaking off from the union.

And on march 2nd, 1861,

Texas joins the southern confederacy

just six weeks before the opening shots of the civil war.

When the war breaks out,

soldiers in Texas head for the confederate army.

And so, what were heavily guarded areas in Texas

now are largely unguarded.

Many Texas rangers also enlist.

In their absence,

the comanche unleash a series of raids,

not only halting the flow of settlers into west Texas,

but staring off the ones already there.

But Cynthia Ann stays in east Texas

many miles from the raids with her white family,

but has no idea what happened to her husband or to her son.

Cynthia Ann never reconciled herself to her fate.

She never got used it, she never forgot it.

She never stopped mourning

for both her husband and for her two boys.

This one surviving photo of Cynthia Ann and her daughter,

it speaks volumes.

Her hair is cut short, in mourning,

and there's a sense of desperation,

of getting back to her family,

back to her comanche people.

Topsannah was not supposed to be in the picture,

but she was fussy,

and so Cynthia Ann takes her and begins feeding her.

When the civil war finally comes to an end in 1865,

congress abolishes slavery in every state, old and new,

and begins the process of reconstruction in the south.

Cynthia Ann and topsannah have survived the turmoil,

but perhaps in vain.

Topsannah comes down sick with pneumonia.

She's very ill.

She doesn't survive.

Cynthia Ann is beside herself with grief.

She's lost her husband,

her two boys, and now her little girl.

She's lost everything.

Now completely severed from her comanche family,

Cynthia Ann refuses to eat and purposefully wastes away.

She dies 11 years after her second capture,

never reconciled, never happy again,

and mourning 'til the day that she died.

By the early 1870s, many of the plains Indians,

including the sioux in the north and the apache in the south,

are being moved onto reservations by the military.

But Cynthia Ann's son, quanah Parker,

now around 30 years old,

is leading a coalition of armed resistance

on the southern plains.

In 1874, president ulysses s. Grant

sends troops to the Texas panhandle,

determined to ensure the security of white settlers

by forcing every last comanche onto the reservation.

The conflict will come to be known as the red river war.

The us government make their final absolute attempt

to crush the comanches and other south plains Indians

in this spectacular place called

palo duro canyon in west Texas.

Federal soldiers led by colonel ranald s. MacKenzie

ambushed a comanche village

and burned more than 400 teepees to the ground.

MacKenzie took 1,400 horses that belonged the comanches,

and shot them.

They wouldn't fall over dead like Hollywood movie actors.

They would take off bleeding.

So there's wild screaming horses in all directions.

By the end of the year,

the remaining southern plains Indians

fighting alongside quanah Parker surrender

and move on to reservations as ordered.

Quanah Parker, he is the last holdout.

He is the last of the free roaming comanche leaders,

and the last of the resistance to the United States

in this area of the country.

Unable to defeat their enemy in battle,

the army instead cuts off their food supply.

The us adopts an official policy of exterminating

the buffalo herds that the plains tribes live on.

The bison population dropped to about 1,000.

It's a decline of 99.99996%

in basically two generations.

The bison are virtually gone.

The comanche are being told

they're going to become sedentary farmers,

and they'll be so much happier if they do.

The native perspective when it comes to farming,

to be plowing a field behind a mule,

it's the lowliest thing they could think of.

They just didn't want to do it.

Being a warrior and a hunter was the highest pursuit.

But quanah Parker and the comanche

have almost nowhere to go and nowhere to turn.

For almost two centuries, the comanche built an empire

upon the two most iconic animals of the American west,

the horse and the buffalo.

Their nomadic way of life depends on them both,

but now they're under attack.

And by 1875, the comanches, the lords of the plain,

who once numbered 40,000, are down to 1,500.

They either have to go extinct by fighting to the last person,

or they have to cut whatever deal they can

with the people who are taking their world from them.

By the summer of 1875,

the only comanche still riding the southern plains

are quanah Parker's band, the quahadi.

Quanah must decide whether to give up control

of his ancestral lands forever,

or fight on and risk the extermination of his people.

It's said, when quanah was faced at that crossroads

of what to do, he goes out to a nearby mesa.

He hears a wolf howling in the distance

toward the direction of southwestern Oklahoma,

of fort sill,

where the cavalry have long wanted the comanches to go.

And quanah Parker makes this decision

to finally go to the reservation,

to finally be corralled,

imprisoned on a very small space of land

that is totally contrary

to how you and your people have always moved about.

On June 2nd of 1875,

quanah and his band surrender at the fort sill reservation,

marking the end of the red river war

and the last day of the free comanche.

It's the end of a war that is in effect begun

by the taking captive of this nine-year-old girl

with bright blue eyes,

and it ends with her son's surrender 40 years later.

The 1,500 comanche left with quanah are now forced

to live on just 4,600 square miles of reservation land,

less than 2% of the size of comancheria.

The vast southern plains they once controlled

are soon turned into a patchwork

of fenced-in ranches and farms owned by texan settlers.

The tribes are no longer independent.

They're no longer able

to sustain themselves on the buffalo.

They're dependent on government handouts.

They had to accept rations.

They've been put on these grasslands.

Not really much use for comanches,

but the white cattlemen?

Quanah starts setting up deals

with some of the white ranchers to graze their cattle.

He becomes an entrepreneur.

He starts acquiring wealth.

He built himself a huge house

where he had comanches camped around it all the time.

He has eight wives, at least 20, 25 children.

He becomes this bridge between two cultures.

Theodore Roosevelt becomes a friend of his,

and Roosevelt invites quanah Parker to Washington, DC

for his inauguration on march 4th, 1905.

And quanah talks about packing his six shooter

to protect the president.

When quanah crosses over,

he's buried right next to his mother

and also the remains of his sister, topsannah.

Cynthia Ann and quanah were separated in this life

and reunited at death.

In the end, it's a story with a legacy of destruction,

of conquest, of dispossession of Indian peoples,

of cultural genocide against those peoples.

We are a people with a mixed legacy.

We cannot understand who we are

unless we understand where we came from

and ask ourselves, what can we do better?

What can we do better?

Despite the violence

these two empires inflicted on each other,

it's not just the us military that defeats the comanche.

It's the advancing power of American industry.

Comancheria is carved up

by trails, rails, and telegraph lines.

The land is farmed and grazed to feed a growing nation

and fuel its economy.

The open skies and rolling plains still remain,

but the comanche are confined to reservations.

While Cynthia Ann and quanah Parker

both found a way to embrace a different culture,

the story of Texas, a land conquered by American settlers,

will play out again in California.

Only this time,

the hunger for land is eclipsed by the power of gold fever.