Original subtitles

Thank you.

What's the way of it?

Let the story fires be lighted.

Let our circle be strong and full of medicine.

Hear me.

This is my dream song that I am singing for you.

This is my power song that has taken me to the edge.

This is my talking birth song.

For a new day.

This is rock medicine.

The talking tree.

The singing water.

Listen.

I am dancing underneath you.

Say memory.

Say river.

Say chance.

Say canoe on a river.

Say memory of long ago.

An arrow in flight.

It's a medicine story.

It's what happened long ago.

It's a memory.

It's what has been forgotten.

It's a campfire.

It's the smell of sweet grass and cedar and prayers lifted to sky father.

It's a way, a tradition.

the way it was always done by the people.

Moving northward in my trusty Indian bronco, we traverse through swarms of

winter snowsnakes as they wind their icy way across the lonely ribbon of

asphalt.

Rising above the first big wheat field on the right is an unplowed knoll,

crowned with native prairie grass and a small pile of stones.

A great tribal leader lies buried beneath this bit of earth. He is my

-grandfather, Hortcaptor. I first met him face -to -face in 1969 in a

photographic likeness, a lasting legacy retained by the preeminent recorder of

the Indian West, Edward S. Curtis.

predicted accurately the coming of an animal that was

large, much larger than any other

domesticated animal we've had.

In this case, he spoke about what we now know as a horse.

When the horse came to the Comanche people, the Spaniards, we served as

hands for the Spaniards, learned from them.

Then after a period of time, we were able to utilize the horse and maneuver

in our own fashion.

We found that it was not only an ability for us to ride, but also to gain that

friendship and respect and trust.

So it was kind of like a mutual coming together, like we were just meant to be

the horse.

We incorporated the horse into our culture beyond, I guess, the dog,

because it was also a beast of burden. It carried our load for us. It moved our

people when we had to leave. And I think many of the images that most people who

grew up watching the early Western movies have, the stereotypical Indian on

horseback, the war bonnet, that was the La Cosa.

We changed from a rather peaceful, sedentary,

horticulture village people to a people that became

highly mobile, in fact, rather nomadic. And with the adaptation of the horse

into the male societies, which became warrior societies, we used the horse

to expand.

our relationships with others.

As we came west, then we were the intruder. We were the invaders into

else's territory.

We knew the horse first as Sky Dog, Holy Dog, and Medicine Dog.

During the 16 and 1700s, wild herds roamed freely, spreading north through

Great Plains as far as Canada.

From the Comanche to the Cheyenne to the Blackfeet, within a generation, horse

and rider were inseparable.

Gifted with a new mobility, we expanded and redefined our territories, hunting

the buffalo with greater ease.

We counted our worth, paid our debts, and bought our status with the horse.

We were free and brave with the horse, and it touched us all.

Dog days became horse days.

We have a ceremony for young women.

It's the first teaching ceremony.

is to have your earrings painted with the red earth paint from the Black

And in that ceremony, a young woman is given horsehair earrings like these.

And she is taught that just as the horse carries the burden of the people, a

woman who has sacred knowledge, who hears sacred knowledge, also has a

carry. And it can be very beautiful, but it can also be heavy.

And so the horse also gave a Lakota woman freedom. We own the home that we

in. We have freedom of movement. And so we say a woman that has horses will go

where she desires.

And a woman who owns horsehair earrings makes her own choices.

southwest, but at the same time, there was something else happening.

The gun was coming in from the east.

And every time one of these things, the gun or the horse came, changed the

society.

The gun and the horse brought the Blackfoot people, as well as all the

tribes, into this very dynamic, very unpredictable, extremely

volatile world.

addition to their life as a people.

The gun came by way of the north from white traders who exchanged them with

plains tribes for pelts and furs.

For the hunter on horseback, the rifle made the taking of the buffalo even

easier.

And there was plenty for our people.

But as the gun fed us, so it killed us.

The bullet became the sound of power and began to arbitrate our conflict.

We have now to deal with another race.

Small and feeble when our fathers first met them, but now great and overbearing.

They have a mind to till the soil.

and their love of possessions is a disease with them.

My brothers, shall we submit, or shall we say to them, First kill

me before you take possession of my father's land.

Sitting Bull

The Native Americans will continue on TBS.

Now back to the Native Americans on TBS.

The things the white man would bring appeared to be miracles to us.

But they would turn our world inside out and tear us apart.

There was little in this strange reality we could trust.

The wisdom and balance we had relied on since time immemorial appeared to make

no sense in these turbulent times.

The other thing that came with the horse around that era that we also adopted

into our culture, the guns, the metal knives, those were replacements of

But also during that time, alcohol came among our people. And alcohol was the

other side of this intrusion into our country.

And I think when we look at the great gift that the horse was, we need to also

look at the terrible destruction that alcohol brought to our people.

We are like birds with a broken wing.

My heart is cold within me.

My eyes are growing dim.

Gee, plenty coups.

In the case of our people, the Blackfoot, and the Grover, and certainly

tribes throughout America, the impact of disease upon them was

absolutely the most devastating and most long -lasting impact.

of all of these other introductions.

Europeans traveling the trade routes carried typhoid, influenza, and

which leveled entire populations.

These epidemics tested our faith and our spirit.

It is not an exaggeration that four -fifths of the Indian population of the

region perished during this 1837 so -called smallpox outbreak.

I do not fear death, but to die with my face rotten that even wolves will shrink

at seeing me and say to themselves, that is four bears, the friend of the

whites.

Four bears.

The settlers crossing the Great Plains after the discovery of gold in

California.

brought us into more conflict with the whites.

The government was pressured to protect the gold seekers and preserve peace.

In 1851, 10 ,000 Plains Indians gathered in southeastern Wyoming to negotiate a

solution with the men from Washington.

The treaty, signed at Fort Laramie, guaranteed white travelers on the Oregon

Trail safe passage through our land.

It also guaranteed the tribes of the plains formal territorial boundaries

were to be, as the treaty read, forever free of white men.

The good relationships we had with traders began to break down

with the intrusion of

People going west.

There was an extensive invasion of what we considered our lands.

You know, I always think about what went through their minds way back a long

time ago.

The primary objective of a Comanche person was to maintain our...

territorial rights.

Anybody coughs into our territory, you know, it was war. It was just literally,

you know, you're not welcome, period.

Treaty promises for protection in our territories were soon disregarded.

We were left to defend our dwindling lands with less men and fewer guns.

The soldiers went back east where the great conflict of the Civil War was

raging.

But they soon returned as better trained officers with more sophisticated guns,

techniques of war, and a fighting hunger that would soon devastate us.

At first, The taking of the plains produced only a few lone voices of

the east.

They reminded the nation it was founded on principles of freedom.

But the men who came from Washington used every form of bribery and deception

obtain a signed treaty.

Some who marked their X had no authority.

In 1861 at Fort Wise, just six of 44 Cheyenne chiefs were deemed sufficient

the government.

to sign away nearly all of the former Cheyenne territory.

One article stated that we would receive goods or

annuities from the federal government in exchange for large tracts of land for a

period of 50 years.

The United States Senate, having the powers to ratify any treaty,

that the United States makes, unilaterally changed the

50 -year provision to 15 years.

And when war got back to us, it upset our leaders.

In 1863, presidential peace medals were given to a Southern Plains delegation

meeting with Abraham Lincoln in Washington to ensure a continuing peace.

We are not, as a race, so much disposed to fight and kill one another as our red

brethren, said President Lincoln, as he encouraged adoption of the white man's

way of life.

On that day, casualties of the Civil War had exceeded 300 ,000 lives.

One of our leaders, by the name of Lean Bear, was given a document, and he was

instructed to always carry this document and to show.

to the military troops or to others, that we were at peace, that we were

friendly.

Token gestures of support continued in Washington as the swell of humanitarian

concern for the rights of Indians finally began to appear in the pages of

Eastern newspapers.

But in the West, anti -Indian propaganda filled the newspapers and portrayed us

as obstacles in the way of progress.

It was in the summer of 1864 when Black Kettle, Lean Bear, and a few warriors

were out on the high plains and encountered a small detachment of

the military.

They stopped and faced each other, and Lean Bear volunteered to ride toward the

column of troops with this document in his hand.

When he approached this

detachment of military troops and got within rifle range.

He was fired upon and killed.

The president is the great chief of the white people.

I will hear all the great chief has to say.

And when I go away, I will not carry his words in my pocket.

but in my heart, where they will not be lost.

Lean Bear.

We could have overpowered them, we could have totally annihilated them, but for

the fact that Black Kettle rode in and among his warriors, urging them not to

do anything.

In early 1864, John Evans, the governor of the new territory of Colorado, tried

to convince Washington of the need for a volunteer citizen's army to subdue the

Indians.

Then, on June 11th, a family of white settlers was found murdered and scalped.

Their mutilated bodies were put on display in the streets of Denver.

Four young Arapaho warriors were accused of the murders.

Although responsibility for the killings was never proven, the fires of revenge

began to rage.

Armies of soldiers and volunteer citizens were given license to

hostile Indians.

Responding to death threats for all Indians found off the reservations,

Kettle, a Cheyenne peace chief, led a group of Cheyenne and Arapaho to Camp

to plead for peace with Governor Evans and Colonel Shivington.

the commander of the Colorado Volunteer Army.

During the meeting, Black Kettle spoke.

I want you to get all these chiefs here to understand that we are for peace and

that we have made peace, that we may not be mistaken for enemies.

Black Kettle.

The Indians left with the impression that their words had been understood,

following the council, Evans was heard to say, What shall I do with the 3rd

Regiment if I make peace?

They were raised to kill Indians, and they must kill Indians.

At dawn on November 29th, Colonel Shivington stood with 750 troops above

Sand Creek River, prepared to attack the peaceful village of Black Kettle.

Take no prisoners, he cried.

Remember the slaughtered white women and children.

Over 200 defenseless Indian women, children, and elders soon lay dead in

burned -out camp.

when Chivington's men finally withdrew.

White Antelope had gotten up early that morning, saw the troops massing, and

when he saw that it was a deliberate attack, that it was not a mistake, as a

peace chief, White Antelope just stood there.

He began to sing this death song.

Nothing lives long except the earth and the mountains.

Nothing lives long except the earth and the mountains.

Ellen Hunt Jackson, in her book, A Century of Dishonor, has called the

Sand Creek Massacre the most atrocious act ever committed

in these United States.

Now back to the Native Americans on TBS.

We do not want your civilization.

We would live as our fathers did.

And their fathers before them.

Crazy horse.

In 1993, the skulls of six of the victims of the Sand Creek Massacre were

finally returned to the Cheyenne people for a proper burial.

Stored with thousands of others for over a hundred years, these skulls had been

severed from the body and sent to the Smithsonian Institution to be examined

scientists.

There are more remains of Indian people stored in institutions in this country

than there are living Indians.

God, look down upon us.

Grant us your mercy.

Our relatives, we are now here

for you.

We are taking you back home.

Speaking as a Cheyenne, I can tell you that it is extremely important from our

standpoint to have the human remains taken from that place and returned home.

It fits in with our whole cosmological view of what needs to be done.

for those who have passed from this world and are in the other world.

And so from that standpoint, there's no question that it's critical that these

human remains be returned.

And it, for the tribe, I think, represents a resolution of a history

basically torn Indian society apart.

You think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit?

If I thought you were sent by the Creator, I might be induced to think you

right to dispose of me.

Do not misunderstand me, but understand me fully with reference to my affection

for the land.

I never said the land was mine to do with as I choose.

The one who has a right to dispose of it is the one who has created it.

I claim a right to live on my land.

and accord you the privilege to return to your earth.

Following the Sand Creek Massacre, the division between the warrior societies

and the council of 44 peace chiefs became

wider. So when the winter camp was set up along the banks of the Ouachita in

western part of our reservation in November of 1868,

black cattle was not allowed to camp with the main body.

In an effort to disperse groups of threatening Cheyenne warriors enraged by

massacre at Sand Creek, the government ordered Black Kettle to locate his

village on the Ouachita River in Indian Territory, where other tribes had been

relocated.

Black Kettle and the Peace Chief's compliance was ignored by Colonel George

Custer and his 7th Cavalry.

In the early hours of a frigid morning, Custer commanded the troops to descend

on the Cheyenne village.

At the outset of this so -called Battle of the Ouachita, Black Kettle was

killed.

The United States government condoned Custer's brutal killing of helpless

elders, women, and children on the Ouachita River to assure the white

they were controlling the Indian problem.

Over the next several years, atrocity after atrocity was presented to the

American public as a battle.

or a skirmish, or a campaign, rather than systematic killing.

Our people were herded together on reservations and forced to survive on

government rations.

The voices of people like Black Kettle, who had resolutely continued to stand

for peace, were silenced by the bullets of whites.

There were thousands whose acts of bravery in the face of this destruction

never be known.

For the Plains Indians, the twin rails of iron that snaked ominously onto the

prairies from the east in the 1860s were a fatal incision in the beloved earth.

The railroad signaled the demise of our lifeblood, the great buffalo.

But the Indian had revered the white man defiled with slaughter.

taking only the hides and leaving the carcasses to rot in the prairie sun.

By the early 1880s, a population of 60 million buffalo had been reduced to a

paltry few thousand.

The buffalo were exterminated in 1884.

At that point, that summer, they went on their last hunt.

They could find very few buffalo to sustain them.

Immediately that fall, the government came in and they went throughout the

region, far as you can see, and they brought the Blackfeet, what remained of

tribe, into this area right here.

The government took their horses from them and disarmed them.

And the Blackfeet camped here, waiting to be supplied with the rations and the

annuities that had been promised to them in exchange for land.

The only supplies brought to them during this bleak period was one wagon load of

food was brought from Helena, which is south of us about 200 miles.

The irony was in Helena at that time, you could go to the opera, you could eat

magnificent meal, imported wines for less than a dollar.

As January and February, the most severe months came, the Blackfeet began to die

of starvation.

It is estimated that out of the 3 ,000 plus that came here, over 1 ,600 of them

died of starvation.

By the end of the century, our land had been taken by force or given away.

The government had arranged lotteries, sealed bids, and frantic land runs that

enabled whites to stake claim to over 30 million acres of Indian landholding.

The effort to destroy our peoples was nearly complete.

In considering all these things that really affected our lives, I can't

one thing.

And that is Christianity.

I guess like many other things, they thought they were going to come and save

because we were the heathen.

And like many other things, it was done probably in a good way, but it didn't

quite work for us.

The notion prevalent in America was that all civilized people are Christians.

And in order for the Indians... To really become a part of America, we had

become Christians and civilized.

Our religion seems foolish to you, but so does yours to me.

Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, all have a different God.

Why cannot we have one of our own?

Sitting Bull.

For many Lakota people, when they heard of Christ,

He said, now there is a luck with a man.

This is a Jesuit mission,

St. Paul's.

It was first set up in 1885.

Two years later, they opened a day school.

And they had arrangement with the government. The government went along

this, where they would take Indian students in there to Christianize them.

For every braid of the boys, they'd cut off, throw in there, they'd give them a

piece of candy.

And candy was rare, so it was symbolic, but also it was

kind of a point of Indian pride to have long hair.

April 10th of 1883, the United States government, by statute, outlawed Indian

language, religion, and culture, specifically Sioux language, religion,

culture.

The idea being that so long as Lakota's people spoke their language, they

would live their culture. Their culture would require that they practice their

religion. Their religion requires them to continue to fight for the Black

Unfortunately, Christianity became a vehicle of genocide for the United

government.

When they weren't successful at just warfare, genocide, the genocide became

of bureaucracy.

Take them away from their families.

Take them away from their land.

Tell them that everything they valued of themselves as a people has no value.

And Christianity was that vehicle.

And then we heard of the ghost dance.

A message of salvation came from the West, from a Paiute prophet called

and quickly spread across the plains.

It became known as the Ghost Dance religion.

The Ghost Dance was a ceremony of dancing, singing, and praying, promising

return of the world we had lost, our buffalo, our lands, and our relatives.

The white man would disappear.

Thousands invested their last hope in the Ghost Dance religion.

We danced the ghost dance, but few miracles came.

Instead, our ceremony brought fear to the white man and a final massacre of

inconceivable heartlessness.

Native people were ghost dancing all over the country, but when the Lakota

it, the soldiers marched in.

On December 29, 1890,

The 7th Cavalry caught up with the Lakota chief, Bigfoot, and 350 of his

starving people of the Cheyenne River Band of Sioux.

They were trying to reach the safety of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South

Dakota, where many of their relatives had settled at the government agency.

Bigfoot offered their surrender.

But within minutes, more than 300 men, women, and children lay slaughtered on

the frozen earth.

We can never forget Bigfoot and his people being gunned down at

Wounded Knee.

In 1985, a medicine man, Curtis Kills Reeve, saw a way to help mend the sacred

hoop of the Lakota people which was shattered at Wounded Knee.

The hoop represents the unity of all life.

To heal, a five -year commitment was made for a ceremonial journey on

retracing the route taken by Chief Bigfoot and his band 100 years ago.

You know, my son rode a net. He was 12 years old. He was 11.

He said, I am going to ride on that journey.

I had told him the story of my grandfather's mother, my great

And the story that she passed on was how she cried, not only for Sitting Bull,

but also for herself, for her people.

And she wondered if she would ever live to have proven.

And so my son said, I'm going to ride on that ride, because I don't want my

great -great -grandmother to have cried for nothing.

Another young Lakota, Wombly Nimpa, afraid of Hawk.

was just eight when he joined the final ride.

My great -grandfather was with Bigfoot at Wounded Knee. He was only ten years

old.

When the soldiers started shooting, he hid in a creek gully.

Then he ran up the creek and escaped into the hills.

The first four winters, I watched my dad leave with our horses for the ride.

I really wanted to go so much.

December 28th, the last day my ancestors were alive 100 years ago.

Our prayer circle had the most writers yet, 350.

All the writers were quiet.

They knew that this was the day Bigfoot was walking to his death.

December 29th. We went back to the gravesite to honor the dead.

Hundreds of Lakota people were there to listen and watch.

There were women covered with blankets crying near the ancestors' graves.

I saw how much everyone was hurt for the last hundred years.

But I also felt very proud.

I was a Bigfoot rider now, not a little kid.

When I get older, I want to tell my children and grandchildren about Wounded

Knee.

Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean to hear my feeble voice.

Hear me not for myself, but for my people.

Hear me that they may once more go back into the sacred hoop and find the good

red road, the shielding tree.

Make my people live.

Black Elk

The Native Americans will continue on TBL.

Now back to the Native Americans on TBL.

I was born upon the prairie where the wind blew free and there was nothing to

break the light of the sun.

I was born where there were no enclosures.

where everything drew a free breath.

I want to die there, and not within walls.

I know every stream and every wood between the Rio Grande and the Arkansas.

I have hunted and lived over that country.

I lived like my fathers before me, and like them, I lived happily.

Tin Bears

In 1929, my great -grandfather, Holohorn, publicly danced the Sundance,

first time it had been publicly performed since 1882.

In this century, this ancient ceremony of prayer, like many other traditional

Native rituals, was brought back to life just as the last elders who knew it

were passing on.

I think each generation did their part to move.

toward the goal of continuing our people as a distinct people.

Reclaiming our cultures and the expression of our native heritage starts

reclaiming our languages.

These children are being taught the Blackfeet language in a Head Start

on their reservation in Montana.

Jeffrey, your turn. Say bear and black bear.

Good. Your turn.

Good. Jessica.

Black bear.

In

1985,

Daryl Kipp co -founded the Pagan Institute.

to encourage the re -emergence of Blackfeet culture as a living form.

We began to first study the Blackfoot language.

We coined the phrase, we said, we weren't dumb, we were just numb.

We were so numb for many years of being oppressed and taught that our language

was so worthless.

And actually, our people before us were absolutely punished for using their

language. Then, it wasn't... unreasonable then when it came in 1985

found it very difficult to sit and speak about this what had become a taboo

subject.

Once our children can

begin to see the beauty of their culture, they will be equipped to know

value and truth of their past.

I think that we started to realize the power of the legacy that our ancestors

left us.

The Great Plains region from the north all the way down to the south had

a very profound influence upon people.

But what I hear and witness amongst our

group here

Some of those stories the people handed down to us, what are they trying to tell

us?

What legacy do they want us to continue on?

A century ago at Fort Seal in Oklahoma, the Comanche were reviled by United

States soldiers.

Today they are being honored for their unique contribution to the defense of

their country.

We're beginning to establish some very positive elements to ensure that our

young people, that they will have the benefit of identity and culture, and

they will be able to rise to the occasion with integrity, dedication, and

commitment, not only for themselves or families or tribes of the United States

of America.

I use something new today. I like to classify myself as a briefcase warrior

because today we carry briefcases. That's our tool. That's our weapon. It

a modern Indian utilizing an age -old responsibility.

When we use an age -old responsibility, it means that the fight must go on.

My children's lifetime, I would like to see the lands and the black hills return

to the Sioux Nation. I want them to be able to practice.

Lakota religion in our sacred land without undue restriction.

I would like for them to be able to really be Lakota in a way that I

be, the way my parents were denied being, but the way my great

lived and had to give up.

We've got a whole history here, and we're the present of our past, and we

can't give it up no matter how confusing.

The times are.

We've got to gather what we can together and march together for the future.

Hey, it's hard to fall into the footsteps of our elders.

It's difficult to walk in those footsteps, but we've got to keep trying.

Even though we may fall on occasion.

We've got to get back up again and make room for those yet to come so they can

walk on the footsteps of the beauty.

For the Indians of the Great Plains,

there were thousands of years of stories and thousands of years of song.

Our grandparents passed them to their children, and their children passed them

to their children.

These stories and songs are our libraries, and we hold them in our

Our legacy is precious.

We know who we were.

We know where we came from.

We gave so others might give again.

We have survived beautifully, and our legacy is alive in us.

Grandfather, I ask you to bless the white man.

He needs your wisdom, your guidance.

He's tried for so long to destroy my people and only feels comfortable when

given power.

Bless them with your wisdom. Show them the peace we understand.

Teach them humility, for I feel they will destroy themselves and their

as they have done so with Mother Earth.

I plead. I cry.

After all, they are my brother.