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, "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, "OK, 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 authorised 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 honour.

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 worth.

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.

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 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 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 catalogue of the West

drawn in detail in the journals of Lewis and Clark.

So they get beyond the Yellowstone 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 Forrest Hancock and Joseph Dickson.

They've had a rough time of it and now

they have 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,

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 Dickson,

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 savour 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 Dickson

and goes up to the mouth of the Yellowstone.

He knows it's 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 colonisation.

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 Dickson 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 Yellowstone 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 Blackfeet are strongly opposed

to American fur traders coming up the Missouri River

into Blackfeet territory.

And many of those fur traders ended up paying with their lives.

The Blackfeet were feared

by their Native American neighbours, like the Crow,

and they transmitted this fear to the white folks that came on.

Watch out for the Blackfeet.

By the early 1800s, the Blackfeet 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 Blackfeet 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 licence, no negotiation,

just coming in,

killing stuff, and taking it out.

The Blackfeet 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 Dickson 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 Dickson 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 Yellowstone 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 Yellowstone

is legendary.

He makes his way west of the Wind River range

into what we know of as the Yellowstone 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 Blackfeet

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 Blackfeet 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.

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 Blackfeet,

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 Blackfeet 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 Blackfeet.

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 Blackfeet

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.

This is grand vision, and they 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 Blackfeet territory.

When fur trappers first came to Blackfeet country,

the Blackfeet 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 Blackfeet 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 Blackfeet.

Colter and Potts are on the river in their boat

fixing beaver traps,

and a large group

of Blackfeet warriors

appears on the banks of the river

and motions them to come ashore.

John Colter realises

there's no escape. It's totally pointless.

Woah. 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 Blackfeet group.

The Blackfeet 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 Blackfeet

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's 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 Blackfeet 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 Blackfeet are defending their homelands

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 Blackfeet 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 realises

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 Blackfoot 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 savour 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 downriver,

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 Blackfeet 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."

He's badly damaged. He's totally exhausted.

The Blackfeet, they're still searching for him.

All day, they were moving back and forth,

gotta be here somewhere.

The Blackfeet

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 recognise him.

He recovers

and continues his adventures for two more years,

but after a few more close calls with the Blackfeet,

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 Blackfeet 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 Blackfeet...

...his story serves a purpose.

I've always believed

that the Blackfeet

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 Blackfeet 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.

Subtitles by Sky Access Services

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.