[0:07]I'm tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. The old men are all dead. My people, some of them have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food. I want to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead.
[0:29]A Lakota man sings to a line of mounted warriors of the crow tribe. He is called Sitting Bull. He and his warriors have stolen many of their horses and now he mocks them. The crow chief steps forward and the duel starts with a raging charge. The crow chief skids to one knee and raises a rifle. Lead ruptures sitting bull's toe and splays out at his heel. Sitting Bull heaves onto the earth but gathers himself and shoots the chief. The crow writhes in the dirt. Sitting Bull staggers over and forces his knife into the chief's heart. The crow flee. With a blood wet foot dangling against his mount, Sitting Bull journeys back to familiar earth, where swaying hills slope into cool rivers and wolves wander under silver light. And not far from the pockmarked earth and trail of the buffalo, sit rings of sleeping tepees. The returning victor will be known as a medicine man, a spiritual leader more attuned to prophecy than battle. And on the Great Plains, stealing horses is indeed a prudent endeavor. The indigenous people in the east were decades before decimated by European disease and violently removed to reservations. But the planes remain a buzzing patchwork of diverse and decentralized tribes, rich in complex political allegiances and rivalries. So useful is the European horse in warfare and hunting, that many tribes long ago spurned agriculture in favor of a nomadic equestrian lifestyle, centered around hunting bison and other game. The pelt trade with white settlers sparked a race for wealth, guns and horses. Now animal populations thin due to overhunting. In the warrior cultures of the plains, which traditionally prized small-scale raids and the taking of enemy scalps, descend into devastating intertribal conflict. Less powerful tribes are scattered in the fray by those more rich in horses and guns. The move beyond subsistence living has also intensified inequalities within tribes. The traditional role of women as bison robe makers, develops a more demanding financial aspect. Wealthy men pay large dowries to marry numerous wives, who in turn act as laborers to further increase the man's wealth. Yet the people of the plains still live in generally communitarian villages, based heavily on the virtues of bravery, generosity and wisdom. Around the fire, elders pass along ancient oral histories and speak of the divine beings present in the sky and the rocks and the trees. Into this land begins the Great Westward Crawl of ricketing stage coaches and covered wagon. Dispossessed white settlers passing through to look for gold on the West Coast. They disturb the migration of the bison, and their propensity to clash violently with indigenous peoples has prompted the U.S. military to negotiate and enforce their safe passage. Chiefs like Sitting Bull placed no faith in the American government to manage the plains. For it was American troops who in 1864 colored the Cheyenne Arapaho village at Sand Creek red, seeking to revenge the grizzly murder of a white family by unknown Indians. American troops who ignored their white flag and shot to death mothers and tore scalps from children, and took as their proud trophies brains and fetuses. Neither do Sitting Bull and his band of isolationist Lakota acknowledged treaties as a means of coexistence. Other Lakota Chiefs earlier signed a treaty to permit an American trail through their territory, in exchange for $50,000 worth of provisions per year for 50 years. The U.S. after the fact reduced the duration to 10 years. Treaties also inevitably shortchange tribes in determining tribal rights to land. The Lakota Chief Black Hawk acknowledged as much. These lands once belonged to the Kiowas and the Crows, but we whipped these nations out of them, and in this we did what the white men do when they want the lands of the Indians. The displacement of tribes works in the American government's favor, as landless starving peoples like the Pawnee, more readily accept the move to reservations. In their own bid for survival, the Crow agree to allow American trails through their territory. But the land is traditionally Cheyenne, Arapaho and Lakota. Civil War veterans and immigrants from Europe begin to rake through the landscape. And a Lakota Chief called Red Cloud rallies his people. Their presence here is an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we then to give up their sacred graves to be plowed for corn? I am for war. Red Cloud's war as it's called sees tribes unite to raid U.S. forts and caravans. The young Lakota warrior Crazy Horse is in equal measure aloof and impassioned. He lures American soldiers from their fort into tall grass, from which hundreds of allied Indians emerge. 81 American soldiers are found naked and mutilated. Red Cloud will win the war. And the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 grants the Lakota large swath of reservation land, as well as unceded territories for hunting, promised to be free from white settlement. Later that year, the daring and volatile Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, in his Seventh Cavalry, creep into moonlit position around a Cheyenne village. The people have resisted removal to Indian territory in Oklahoma and launched retaliatory raids on settlers. So Custer, who has earned his stripes fighting Confederates, leads his men at daybreak to storm the village. They kill men, women and children, set fire to tepees and slaughter almost a thousand horses. Like many facing starvation and massacre, Red Cloud and his Lakota followers seek survival on the reservation. But already he senses treachery. In a diplomatic trip to Washington D.C., Red Cloud learns of a hidden clause in the 1868 treaty. The unceded territory shall only remain indigenous land as long as there are enough buffalo on the territory to justify the hunt. Thousands of Lakota have chosen Sitting Bull to be their supreme war chief. He refuses to acknowledge treaties or settle onto a reservation. And in the summer of 1873, scouts report to his camp. Hundreds of wagons and horses have cut into Dakota and Montana territory, surveyors from the railroad industry. 1,500 U.S. cavalry guard their expedition, led by Colonel David Stanley and his second in command, George Custer. Sitting Bull mobilizes Crazy Horse and other warriors to raid Custer's expedition day and night. The Americans repel them, and then they disappear. No wave of soot covered railroad laborers arrives. Global economies have collapsed. The New York Stock Exchange closes, Titans of industry drown in debt, and poor laborers riot. The Lakota meanwhile ascend to new heights in power. They are rich in horses and robes, and are thoroughly armed. They strike to the east, north, and west, steal horses, and plunder from all the surrounding tribes, as well as frontier settlers, and luckless white hunters. The Lakota and their allies appear to be the most formidable block of indigenous power in the way of U.S. expansion. That summer of 1873, Lakota Chiefs Pawnee Killer and Little Wound encounter Pawnee on contested hunting grounds. Their warriors massacre nearly 200 Pawnee. Most are women and children left charred or prostrate and scalpless in the dirt. The decline of bison herds encourages this intertribal violence and quickly begins to undermine Lakota power. Whites abandon the failing U.S. economy and trespass onto indigenous land to hunt bison. Certain U.S. officials see in this an opportunity to exterminate the plains Indians source of food and clothing, and to clear land for railroads. Army officers provide ammunition and protection to the hunters, who kill millions of bison. 3,000 per day between 1872 and 1874.
[9:54]Starving Indians lean on U.S. rations for sustenance, only to find that the corrupt Grant administration delivers them the very worst it has to offer, cheap flour and putrid pork. Red Cloud travels to D.C. to address the issue, whereupon the Commissioner of Indian Affairs informs him that the U.S. is going to seize the unceded lands, as they no longer support substantial numbers of buffalo. Custer meanwhile, has journeyed in secret to the lands of the Black Hills and found traces of gold. When the Lakota refuse to sell these sacred lands, President Grant orders his troops to stand down, and allow whites to enter the Black Hills with impunity. In December of 1875, just a few months after the once fearsome Comanche tribe in the South is forced onto a reservation, Grant issues a deadline to the Lakota. By January 31st of 1876, every member of the Lakota Sioux people must be located on the reservation. Those who are not will be deemed hostile, liable to be chased and shot, like unruly buffalo.
[11:08]Across damp and pale hills, streaked by wet clumps of snow, hostiles ride out. Delegates of Sitting Bull seeking alliance from Arikara, Mandan and Hidatsa tribes. They venture north, too, to trade for guns. Before the tide of white invasion, tribal rivalries thaw. As Sitting Bull and his people migrate defiantly west toward bison herds. Indians of all banners join their cause. Lakota from reservations, Dakota refugees from Canada and Cheyenne exiles. Together their pointed rows of tepees stretch miles on the plains, in a 10,000-person multi-ethnic coalition.
[11:51]At an intertribal sun dance ceremony, Sitting Bull dances entranced for hours and announces to them a vision. Enemy soldiers filling the sky like grasshoppers, falling to their deaths. Days later, scouts sight a massive army of American soldiers some miles away. In the black of night horses are ready, and Crazy Horse rallies 750 warriors to attack. In a swirling six-hour battle, they inflict enough damage to halt the U.S. advance toward the village. But a week later more Sioux scouts weave through the camps, now situated along the Big Horn River. American troops are close. Women pack their things with screaming babies in their arms. Sitting Bull pushes for negotiation, but soldiers begin firing into tepees and shoot his horse. They intend to destroy the village. Sitting Bull sends forth a massive contingent of Cheyenne and Lakota warriors, who chase the Americans into retreat. But charging across ravines and gulches, George Custer arrives with another detachment. The massive Indian encampment is two times as large as he's anticipated. Masterful horse warriors swarm his positions and scatter the retreating Americans on the far side of the river. Custer and around 50 men gather to a hill. He pulls them into desperate formation, and beyond the tumbling clouds of gunsmoke, the apparition of their doom advances. A ceaseless gallop of hostiles in the hundreds and a charging Crazy Horse. The Cheyenne and Lakota shoot arrows and bullets into Custer's pack, then pour onto them with Tomahawks and knives. Blue clad men crawl along the grass, with feathered quills caught in their backs. One young Lakota recounts, There was a soldier on the ground and he was still kicking. A Lakota Sioux rode up and said to me, boy, get off and scalp him. I got off and started to do it. He had short hair and my knife was not very sharp. He ground his teeth. Then I shot him in the forehead and got his scalp. They leave none alive. Custer is found plucked and torn into a ghastly figure. The battle is remembered by one Lakota. They came to fight us and we had to fight. These white men wanted it, they called for it and I let them have it. The Cheyenne and Lakota clear the rest of the battlefields and then they flee with their people.
[14:24]From the high seats of Congress comes vengeance. American representatives pass a law compelling the Lakota to bequeath the lands outside the Great Sioux Reservation and to sell the Black Hills. In the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, it was agreed that no future land sessions could be made without the signatures of 75% of all adult male Lakota. Congress overwhelmingly passes the agreement with just 10%. 7 million acres of land are seized. Remaining indigenous inhabitants become outlaws in the lands of their forefathers. They scour over hills to find heaps of bison flesh pulsating with maggots. Black vapor smears the skyline of the Black Hills and men turn up the dark earth in search of gold. Crazy Horse at last reports to a reservation. When he's arrested a few months later, a struggle ensues, and a soldier kills him with a bayonet. Sitting Bull meanwhile, has vanished. He and his followers have settled in Canada, where they found ample bison for the hunt, and a spot to pitch their fire lit tepees and recite to their kin the tired legends of their people. The last holdouts of indigenous power in North America are crashing. Chief Joseph and 700 of his ailing Nez Perce people of the Northwest attempt to escape north to join Sitting Bull, but the U.S. Army pursues him and forces a surrender. After a few years, the bison of Canada begin to vanish, and in 1881, Sitting Bull travels south with his people. The old chief still limps from that duel so long ago. And he surrenders to the U.S. with the words, I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle. He and his followers are pushed onto a steamboat and imprisoned for two years in a military fort. Until their release to the Standing Rock Reservation. In the coming years, starvation, massacre and broken treaties facilitate the removal of nearly all American Indians onto reservations. On the Great Plains, proud warriors are made to push plows and farm poor soil. The U.S. government periodically cuts their rations to save money, and malnourished indigenous children are ruined by disease. Hope comes from the Southwest in 1889. Wovoka of the Paiute tribe prophesies that the dormant spirits of fallen ancestors shall return to drive out white settlers. And Jesus will return, and from the ashes of this syncretic drama shall emerge a new land, replete with buffalo and devoid of war. All of this, Wovoka claims, can be realized by the regular performance of the Ghost Dance ritual. And so, the ailing tribes across the Western U.S. begin to dance for their own deliverance, for divine apocalypse. Paranoid American officials fear that Sitting Bull supports the movement and order his arrest. For centuries, plains Indians have organized oral histories with records called Winter Counts. An entry for 1890 depicts plainly the scene, when dozens of reservation police encircle the cabin of Sitting Bull, and one of the chief's supporters attacks Indian agent Bullhead. Bullhead spins and fires into Sitting Bull's chest. Another officer shoots Sitting Bull in the head. The chief's 14-year-old son, Crowfoot hides for cover, but he's pulled out from under a bed and shot to death. Many of Sitting Bull's followers depart to join the camp of another Lakota Chief, Spotted Elk. U.S. troops from Custer's old Seventh Cavalry have forced his patch of tepees to Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. They descend into the village to confiscate guns, and a struggle with one villager prompts the troops to begin shelling the camp with cannons. They quickly kill all the Lakota warriors, then turn to shoot the fleeing women and their children and elderly. A baby is left nursing from its mother's corpse. After most all of them had been killed, a cry was made that all those who were not killed or wounded should come forth and they would be safe. Little boys came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight, a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there.
[19:17]A great winter storm falls upon the land. Locks the contorted corpses in a final frost. Brown blood clings frozen to tiny fingers. The dead chief Spotted Elk stares grotesquely upright. In the wake of the Wounded Knee massacre, men arrive to pile the corpses into mass graves, nearly 300 dead.
[19:54]The U.S. government passes more laws to fracture reservations and allow white Americans to sell land that treaties have promised to plains Indians. On reservations, officials restrict life giving rations to force families to sell off coveted land, cease public displays of indigenous religion, and permit children to be taken away to residential schools, which ban traditional language and mandate instruction in English and Christianity. As one headmaster explains, the schools see to it that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.
[20:40]The Great Plains sound different than they used to. The churning scream of iron has usurped the thunder of 60 million bison. In the late 19th century, fewer than a thousand total buffalo remain. This is a new age of abundance and squalor, innovation and exhaustion. Factory press automobiles stutter through city streets. The Great Western expanse is drilled by oil rigs and tracked by telephone wires. And bustling towns and rocks and rivers bear the names of people's half remembered epitaphs to inhabitants long since killed or exiled. The people of the planes are not extinct, they will painstakingly preserve their cultures and languages. But watching it all in 1909 through eyes grown dim is an old warrior Nomad on a reservation. Red Cloud's cavernous visage betrays nine decades of war and grief. He grants himself a moment to summon up the old planes and to contemplate a new struggle. I, who used to own rich soil in a well-watered country so extensive that I could not ride through it in a week on my fastest pony, am put down here. Now I, who used to control five thousand warriors, must tell Washington when I am hungry. I must beg for that which I own.
