Original subtitles

Welcome back to another exciting journey

into the pages of our past.

Today we visit the Native Americans

and I'll be sharing a story that no one will argue

or find fault with.

Okay?

Anyone?

Adam Conover, perhaps?

Speak now or forever shut up!

Good.

Now on with my show.

For thousands of years these simple people

lived in harmony with nature.

That is until the arrival of the Plymouth Pilgrims

who brought civilization to this wild land,

starting with the first Thanksgiving in 1621.

Uh, that's not quite...

Dag gummit! No!

I'm finishing my intro.

After a long journey across the Atlantic,

the Pilgrims settled a harsh wilderness.

There they met the friendly Native Americans

who, with the help of the English-speaking Squanto,

taught them to plant corn.

We are friends.

And friends, this is corn.

In thanks, the Pilgrims invited

the Native Americans to a feast,

one that we still celebrate to this day.

Actually, that's not how any of this went down.

Aarrrrhhhh!

You have a problem with how I'm telling the story

of the first Thanksgiving?

Not one problem. Many problems.

In fact, your entire approach to Native American history

is totally wrong.

That's a big friggin' statement.

With big friggin' facts to back it up.

I'm Adam Conover and this is "Reanimated History."

??

??

*ADAM RUINS EVERYTHING* Season 02 Episode 18 Title: "The First Fact Giving

Okay, you talking corn husk.

Everyone knows the story of the first Thanksgiving.

The Pilgrims came to the New World on the Mayflower

seeking religious freedom and they broke bread

with the friendly Native Americans.

It's sweet and it's simple.

And that's why we force adorable grade-schoolers

to reenact it every year.

And almost none of it is true.

First of all, you have the dinner guests all wrong.

Oh, are you saying the guests

weren't Native Americans?

They weren't generic Native Americans,

they were members of a specific group,

the Wampanoag, and a majority of the people

on the Mayflower weren't Pilgrims.

Only a third of the passengers

were seeking religious tolerance.

The rest came for economic opportunity.

I'm here for the cash, baby.

Gonna buy a solid gold buckle for my hat.

Well, who doesn't love cash?

Cash rules the world.

Heretics.

Huh, did not know that.

Well, whatever the reason, the industrious settlers came

to an empty wilderness and built the town of Plymouth

with their bare hands.

Far from it!

The settlers actually built Plymouth on top

of an abandoned Patuxet village

that had been wiped out by disease.

Wait, what?

As a result, most of the work had been done for them.

Patuxet already had cleared fields, fresh water,

and pre-built homes.

We are super unprepared for this whole settling thing,

so we really need a place that's, uh, move-in ready.

This abandoned village is priced to sell,

and that price is zero.

Eh, Pilgrims can't be choosers.

They took over a dead tribe's village?

That's disturbing.

Yeah, and they also ate corn and beans

the Patuxet people had buried years earlier.

Jackpot!

Geez, Pilgrims really liked their corn.

Not even gonna boil it first, huh?

Hmm, well, they had to survive.

They had no choice, right?

But they did have a choice

of whether or not they dug up graves.

And according to the settlers' own journals,

that's exactly what they did.

Francis, are you seriously writing this down?

Keep this shit a secret, man!

Hey! Are those bowls?

Okay, that is... awful.

But the settlers weren't all bad, right?

They befriended Squanto! That's heartwarming.

- Corn! - Corn!

Sorry. While it's true that Squanto...

Whose real name was Tisquantum... Helped the settlers,

his story is less heartwarming and more heartbreaking.

In 1614, Tisquantum was kidnapped and brought to Europe

to be sold into slavery.

It took him years, but he eventually escaped.

He then crisscrossed the Atlantic,

picking up English along the way,

before finally making it back home.

Finally the nightmare is over.

I'm so happy to be back home in Patuxet.

Wait. Patuxet?

Isn't that the same village that...

No!

Alone and without his people,

Tisquantum was captured by the Wampanoag

who put him to use as a translator.

Some English just showed up

and we need you to negotiate an alliance,

so they'll help us kill our enemies.

So Tisquantum was forced to go to his former village

and strike a deal between the two groups.

The Chief says we will trade you corn and corn-know-how

if you will help them fight the Narragansett.

Fresh corn that's not buried in the ground?!

Count us in.

Hey, boys, we got corn!

Corn!

So, after we murder your enemies,

wanna have a little feast or something?

Sure, whatever.

Wait, that's what led to the first Thanksgiving?

The Pilgrims traded their military might

for some farming tips from the Wampanoag?

Yup!

Ugh, I hope you're happy, Adam.

You just ruined a 400-year-old national holiday.

Actually, Thanksgiving has only been a national holiday

for 155 years!

It wasn't until the woman who wrote "Mary Had A Little Lamb"

started sending letters to Abraham Lincoln

that Thanksgiving became...

That's enough!

I was wrong, okay?

Isn't history a lot more complicated

and troublesome than you thought?

On that we can agree.

Well, after all this awfulness, I should tell a happy story.

One of true love.

The story of Pocahontas, which is a...

Horrifying tale of abuse and exploitation.

So you're gonna just keep interrupting me to...

Tell you the truth? Yup.

I'm very fun at parties.

The story of Pocahontas and John Smith

is one many of us know from childhood.

A real-life American "Romeo and Juliet."

Back in the early 17th century,

Pocahontas was the mischievous daughter of a powerful chief.

She was meant to marry a warrior named Kocoum...

...but instead she cast off tradition

and chose the Englishman John Smith...

a charming adventurer

who had arrived with the Jamestown settlers.

After they fell in love,

Pocahontas saved John Smith's life

from the wrath of her father.

Get away from my daughter, you European scum!

Father, no!

Don't harm this sweet man.

I'm very into him!

Her heroic act of devotion

is one we remember to this day.

Sure do!

But we remember it all wrong.

Oh, look, you're a raccoon now.

Hooray.

We prefer to be called Trash Pandas.

And the real story of Pocahontas

is way darker than the animated movie.

Let's start at the top.

While it's true that Pocahontas

was the daughter of a powerful chief,

she would never have been romantically involved

with John Smith.

In this New World, I will find

not only adventure, but also love!

'Cause when John Smith arrived in Jamestown in 1607,

Pocahontas was only ten years old.

Maybe love is, ah, deeper in the woods.

And Pocahontas never saved John Smith's life,

'cause no one was trying to kill him.

Smith either made the whole thing up

or misunderstood a religious ceremony

welcoming him to the tribe.

Welcome, friend.

Ah! The violent native seeks

to crush me in his bear-like grip!

What? No.

Man, this guy is dense.

But the biggest mistake is that John Smith

wasn't the hero of this story.

Frankly, he and the British were total jerks.

When the Jamestown settlers first arrived,

Chief Powhatan welcomed them

and gave them badly needed supplies.

That is, until the autumn of 1608

when a particularly bad harvest meant the Powhatan people

didn't have any more to give.

My apologies. We barely have enough

to get our own people through the winter.

But the British reaction to this was, uh...

pretty violent.

Merry Christmas.

I can't believe I tried to hug you.

The British threatened and harassed them so much

that Chief Powhatan ended up moving the entire village

further from Jamestown just so they'd be left alone.

Ugh, these guys are the worst.

Let's get out of here!

Even if I was an adult, I wouldn't marry that jerk.

Pocahontas ended up marrying the warrior Kocoum,

who she actually liked quite a bit.

You know what I like most about you?

You didn't violently threaten my people.

Meanwhile, back in Jamestown,

John Smith, the intrepid explorer,

was lighting his pipe...

...and accidentally blew himself up with gunpowder

and had to return to England to recover.

What a maroon!

So that's the end of the story? Weird.

Nope! From there, things only got worse for Pocahontas.

I should've guessed.

After John Smith's departure,

Pocahontas was kidnapped by another British settler

who was also feuding with her father.

You feud with us, we steal your kids.

You know what? I'm gonna say it...

these people are assholes.

While in captivity, Pocahontas converted to Christianity,

learned English, and married a man named John Rolfe.

From the second I saw you

ripped from your family and cultural context,

I knew you were the one.

I vow to love you always.

And I vow to make the best of the worst possible situation.

That's the British spirit.

Then Pocahontas, John Rolfe, and their newborn son

went to England on a publicity trip

meant to stir up more investment for Jamestown.

Come one, come all to look at John Rolfe

and his beautiful native wife!

Wait, wait, wait, they used a kidnapped woman

as a marketing tool?!

That's terrible.

Yes. It was.

And, unfortunately, after this visit to London,

Pocahontas died of disease at the age of 21.

She'd never see her home or her people again.

How in the world did we get a sweet love story

from such a sad tale?

Well, for that, you can thank

that old exploding sleazebag, John Smith.

Because in 1612, he wrote a bestselling account

of his adventures that falsely depicted Pocahontas as grown up,

beautiful, and into him.

"And after Pocahontas saved my life,

"her beautiful adult body embraced me.

"'You're such a hero, you'd never

blow yourself up with gunpowder, ' she exclaimed."

This dude also claimed in another book

that Pocahontas and 30 other women in her tribe

attacked him with a dance and demanded sexual favors.

"And then things started to get really hot.

Oh, yeah, everybody wanted a piece of John Smith."

Ugh, what a creep!

Creepily influential.

Smith's account became the basis

for centuries of mythologizing.

And it was those myths that made their way

into the animated movie 350 years later.

Thirty women?

Sexual favors?

I smell a G-rated children's film!

This false, romanticized version

became the story of Pocahontas most of us know today,

even though it's painted

with all the creative liberties of the wind.

Anyone else hot?

I can't believe I was retelling

that lamewad's crappy narrative.

Adam, allow me to redeem myself.

For our final story, we'll talk about what the Americas

were like before the Europeans even arrived.

Were you gonna repeat that old story

about how the Americas were wild, empty, and uncivilized?

Because that's totally wrong.

Let's get you out of there, little guy.

y, you know what, help me out here.

Leave him in there.

Before Europeans arrived,

the New World was an empty and fertile land.

The small groups of Native Americans there

lived simply and only ate what nature provided.

They took apples from the trees, fish from the streams,

and buffalo from the, uh, bushes, I suppose?

But all that changed

when Europeans brought civilization to the Americas.

?

Oh, wow, we have a lot of ground to cover here, whew.

Luckily, I have my most active ruining outfit on.

Ugh, all your outfits are ruining outfits.

I can handle this, Adam.

Sorry, but you are super wrong.

Super wrong?

How am I already super wrong?

Where to start?

First off, even the way

you're using the term "Native American"

is a vast oversimplification.

There were hundreds of tribes

speaking over a thousand languages

spread across the American continents

before European arrival.

For example, the Algonquian from the Eastern Woodlands

and the Taos from the Southwest had vastly different lifestyles.

They were as different as the Vikings and the French.

My life is nothing like theirs.

So there's very little you can say

that applies to all Native Americans as a single group.

Except that there weren't very many of them, right?

Oh, no! There were.

Before European arrival,

there were between 50 and 100 million people

living in the Americas.

That's insane.

The population of Europe in the 15th century

was only like 70 million.

Exactly!

Some experts say there were actually

more people in the Americas than Europe.

That many people were just wandering around the woods?

Nope! Because that's another big misconception.

Lots of Native American groups

actually lived in organized settlements.

This is a Secotan village,

a tribe that lived in the outer banks

of what's now North Carolina.

Wow, this place is lively!

Yeah, we live in permanent homes.

We farm large fields as a group.

We save food in storehouses for winter

and trade extensively with our neighbors.

We're running a civilization here.

What, did you think we were just

running around the woods in our underwear?

No... of course not.

And some tribes like the Iroquois

even had complex political organizations.

Vote Hiawatha come autumn!

Hey, you, sir, would you like some information

on the great work Hiawatha is doing for...

This image we have of small bands of nomadic people

is totally wrong.

You're right, this isn't what I pictured,

but it still feels, I don't know,

not as civilized as Europe?

Because it's not a city? Right.

Well, then let's go to a city.

Onward to Cahokia!

Cha-Who-kia?

Cahokia!

A city once located in North America

near what is now St. Louis.

At its height around 1100 A.D.,

upwards of 30,000 people lived there.

It rivaled London and Paris in population.

Yah, London is cool. Paris is sweet.

But have you been to Cahokia?

Ha! That city is crazy, man.

The city was so massive, it even had suburbs!

And they built massive earthworks.

The biggest, Monks Mound,

was larger than the Great Pyramid at Giza!

Monks Mound is way underrated.

Giza is such a tourist trap, pssh.

Imagine the sheer number of people

and level of organization it must have taken

to build such massive structures.

That's incredible!

But why have I never heard of this before?

Why didn't the European settlers

document how crazy populated the continent was?

Simple.

These civilizations were wiped out by disease

before most of the settlers arrived.

When explorers first started coming to the Americas

in the late 15th century,

they encountered shores that were packed with people.

My God, this continent is full to the brim!

And they also spread infectious disease.

Sorry!

From smallpox to measles to influenza.

Epidemic after epidemic hit the continents

and the native people had no immunity to any of them.

It's been estimated that in the 16th century,

90% of the Native Americans died of diseases.

So, by the time the larger wave of settlers

arrived a century or so later,

many saw a landscape

that had been effectively cleared of people.

Huh, not a lot of Native Americans around.

Well, they must live in small,

nomadic groups in the wilderness.

Time to dig up some graves!

That's wrong!

Just a few years before, there were tons of people here!

Yeah, but the settlers didn't know that.

So the tales and letters they wrote home

told of an empty continent ripe for the picking.

"Dearest Mother, this land is virtually uninhabited.

"God has given an entire continent to white Europeans.

"Oh, also, in your next care package, can you send...

everything? We need everything."

The settler's account created the persistent myth

of an empty, wild pre-Columbian America.

But it wasn't true.

Before the arrival of Europeans,

this was actually a bustling continent

of tens of millions of people

and hundreds of complex societies.

Disease changed it all.

My God!

I'm so flabbergasted, I don't even know

if I'm using the word "flabbergasted" right.

All that culture lost.

All those people ignored by a false history.

It's terrible.

I'm terrible for perpetuating it.

Krypton.S01E03.The.Rankless.Initiative.720p.AMZN.WEBRip.DDP5.1.x264-SiGMA

You can correct that mistake by...

No. I've heard enough.

I don't deserve to narrate this show.

Wait, are you really leaving?

Hello?!

I was about to tell you why you've been

making these mistakes and how you might correct them!

Ah, man, even disembodied voices try to run away from me.

Narrator? Narrator? Hello?

We're back from commercial!

Don't you want to finish up the show?

No.

Aw, why not? What's wrong?

What do I even show or say?

I've been so wrong about everything.

Yeah, but that's because you made the same mistake

so many of us have made before you.

When we tell stories about Native American history,

we often do so through a European lens...

Stories based on misinformed settlers

or a romanticized account written by a horny explorer.

"'So you native women want me to marry you all at once?

"'Well, who is John Smith

"to keep John Smith all to himself?'

John Smith exclaimed."

John Smith, you sexy fox.

If we truly want to know the past,

what we need to do is give more weight

to the Native American perspective.

We need to tell the story through their lens.

If you look at more recent scholarship...

and native oral traditions...

you can get a more accurate picture

of what native peoples' lives were like in the Americas.

And it really wouldn't hurt

if you renamed your Washington football team.

I mean, come on.

And if you do that, you'll help right a huge wrong

that's discounted the contributions and legacies

of hundreds of societies and millions of people.

That... sounds good.

I'll try, Adam. Thank you.

Ooh! Well, if you liked that,

I have even more facts we couldn't get into earlier!

Like, did you know that John Smith's second-in-command

is the guy who ended up kidnapping Tisquantum?

Ooh...

Small New World, huh?

Yeah, that's enough for today.

I'm pretty burnt out. I'll see you next time.

Oh, man, I'm never gonna meet

someone who has my factual endurance.

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