[ "Traveling Wildfire" by Dom Flemons plays] ♪♪ -♪ There's a traveling wildfire ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Sprawling like... ♪ -The Wild West.

Few areas have burned as brightly or as briefly as America's own mythic age.

-♪ You can see it tearing up the mountainside ♪ I'm Dom Flemons, the American songster.

♪ ...where it wants to go ♪ When you think of the Old West, you think Wild Bill Hickok.

You think of Geronimo, the "Hollywood Cowboy".

♪ And my eyes cry looking at the flames ♪ The white cowboy with the white hat on the white horse.

You think of all of the legends.

-But the real story of the West is even wilder.

-The West is about movement, about history, and the evolution of the American identity.

We're just adjusting the lens ever so slightly to show the West in a whole other light through the true stories.

-The American West was infinitely more diverse and complex than Hollywood led us to believe.

It's an age of exploration and cultural clashes, of colonial expansion and native resistance, a place where fortunes were made and lost in a time of law and disorder.

-There are two types of West.

There's the West of the imagination.

And then there's the real West, the literal West, which is still here.

When you begin to recognize the mythology of the West, then you can start seeing the real people who are standing out there on the range and out in the fields.

-The West is a story of chaos, courage, and true grit.

-This is "The Real Wild West".

♪♪ -The American continent is vast and wild.

[ Thunder rumbling ] As the 1800's dawned... ...Americans began venturing west into the wild.

Over the course of a century, the continent would be explored and exploited from coast to coast.

But this was not an untouched and unsettled place.

And long before the west was won, it was home.

-Welcome to the confluence.

Right behind us you'll see the northeastern edge of the Grand Canyon.

But more significantly, this is where the Colorado River and the Little Colorado River meet.

So when they come together in this convergence, it is a very sacred place.

♪♪ According to our oral histories, indigenous people have been stewards of this landscape since time immemorial.

Understanding the contributions of indigenous peoples is important to what we call America.

We've been here forever, and we'll be here forever.

[ Speaking in native language ] And that's my mother and her mother and all of my grandmothers all the way back.

I'm a Navajo woman.

-To the young country called the United States, the mysterious land past the Mississippi River is the West, and little is known about its long history.

-By training.

I'm an archaeologist.

In my childhood, my father would take us to our ancestral sites, and quite frankly, our ancestral sites were archaeological sites.

They were the places where my ancestors lived.

All of these archaeological sites that you see all the way across the United States are all evidence of the fact that indigenous peoples have been here for thousands of years.

Not only have we been here, but we have overcome all of these different landscapes.

Indigenous folks had the indigeneity to build these places and to thrive in these places.

So we see places like Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, Navajo National Monument, and right in our own backyard we have Wupatki.

All of these places tell these amazing stories of how our people survived in this landscape.

They have been here for thousands of years, and these archaeological sites are proof of just that.

-But native land started to change long before Americans began to colonize the West.

-Learning as a child, about the time that my ancestors were in these places, I knew that our people were here before Western civilization.

In thinking about interactions with Europeans... ...it actually happened first with the Spanish conquistadors.

-In the 1500's, The Spanish invaded the American mainland.

They brought with them a hidden weapon.

Native Americans had never been exposed to smallpox, measles, or flu, and the viruses ravaged the continent, killing an estimated 90% of the native population.

But the Spanish brought more than disease.

-We have the introduction of sheep and horses and cattle.

So livestock, animal husbandry.

We see the importation of cotton as well.

And so a lot of our traditional styles began to change.

How we interacted with the -- with the land also began to change.

-The introduction of horses totally transforms how many tribes hunt, migrate, and wage war.

-People that were here during these times were very different from us, but there were still our relatives.

And so we honor that deep time that has passed.

But we also recognize that, again, we've adapted, we've changed, we've braided knowledge and different resources from folks that we've encountered.

-At the dawn of the 1800's, the southwest is a complex web of fluid boundaries where the Comanche, Kiowa, Apache, and Navajo dominate.

To the north, the Lakota and Cheyenne control an expanse reaching all the way into southern Canada.

Indian Country is far from wild.

It is an empire.

-There are estimates that there were between 25 to 100 million indigenous folks that were on this continent before westward expansion.

Right?

And so, with those kinds of numbers, can you imagine the -- just the diversity of language and culture that would have been, you know, throughout this -- this landscape?

There's so much complexity in who we are.

-While the Spanish had established settlements in California and across the southwest, this diverse and complex landscape is little known to most Americans and considered an untamed wilderness.

But one expedition would change the understanding of the West, and in its wake, changed the destiny of the continent.

-The Lewis and Clark Expedition was a sort of special government military detachment that was sent out in 1804, 1805, 1806 to explore the lands that the United States had acquired from France in the Louisiana Purchase.

-In one of the greatest real estate deals in American history, the Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of American territory with the stroke of a pen and a mere $15 million.

-At that point, Louisiana meant a very large swath of territory.

Just sort of beyond that boundary would have been, you know, New Spain.

-To explore these newly acquired lands, Thomas Jefferson forms the Corps of Discovery, led by two men with a broad mandate and big expectations -- Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.

-I think the Lewis and Clark Expedition is the foundational myth of the West.

My name is Kevin O'Briant.

I am an archaeologist and a backcountry historical tour guide.

Here we are in the Lewis and Clark Trail on the Missouri.

Lewis and Clark Expedition is here to see what did Thomas Jefferson just pay for?

The West Coast was well mapped and the East Coast was well mapped, and the middle was -- was mapped, but mapped in the native cartographic style.

A very different style than cartographers in Europe were used to.

And so they had sort of a couple of jobs -- make contact with all of the indigenous groups that lived out here to record as much information as they could possibly get about the flora and fauna, and establishing connections for the fur trade.

It was a mission of empire and it was a scientific expedition.

-The expedition would be composed of an eclectic group of soldiers.

-Most of them were army guys, Backwoodsmen, fur traders.

They were French and native.

-Clark also plans to bring a man who would eventually become one of the earliest African Americans to cross the continent.

-York was a slave.

He was a body servant, which is a valet.

He did all the work of any of the other members, plus being some dude's valet.

-After months of careful preparation, the Corps of Discovery is ready for their odyssey.

-They take off in the spring of 1804.

The journey begins in Saint Louis, and they head up river.

-They hope to travel by waterways all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and by doing so confirmed the existence of a rumored Northwest Passage across the continent.

Five months into their journey, as the weather begins to turn, the expedition builds Fort Mandan to wait out the winter.

There, they meet a French-Canadian trapper who would serve as a valuable guide.

But it was his pregnant wife who became essential to the success of their mission -- Sacajawea.

Her knowledge of the lands, languages, and native people would be vital to the party's success.

Carrying her newborn baby across the country, she is a beacon of peace in foreign lands.

-She was a Lemhi Shoshone woman.

She was 16 or 17 years old, so a very young woman.

And so, of course, it was an indigenous woman that saved the day.

So as an indigenous mom, I just appreciate [Laughs] that sort of...that ferocity and that determination and just the ability of this woman, young woman, to be able to lead this group of men through some of the most rugged territory in the United States.

-In the spring of 1805, an expedition of 31 men, one woman, one baby, and a dog recommence their mission along the Missouri River in search of the Northwest Passage.

-And so they're following the Missouri as far as they can go to its headwaters, hoping they can get past some of these mountains that they have to get through.

-But their dream of a waterway across the country turned out to be just that.

-This is the Continental Divide.

The Rockies start here.

When confronted with it, I think they began to recognize that this idea of an easy portage, you know, between here and the Pacific, was a pipe dream.

August of 1805.

The Shoshone give him directions, provide him with a guide, and he takes them up the Bitterroot River to this road, which at that point is called the Lolo Trail.

And these trails are, you know, older than the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

And we're walking in the footsteps of people who've been walking these trails for thousands and thousands of years.

-They're finally on the right track.

But conditions are challenging.

The party suffers from frostbite, hunger, dehydration, and exhaustion.

On the Lolo Trail, the Corps eventually come upon a tribe of Nez Perce who take pity on the weary travelers.

-When we think about how the West was explored and how these early explorers found their way through these indigenous homelands, it was with the blessing and the assistance of indigenous peoples.

It's part of our culture when they come into our homelands.

As indigenous women, we are taught about what it means to care for your home fires.

As part of that responsibility, when we have people who come through our homelands, we take care of them.

And as soon as they're good and ready, we help them on their way.

And that's just who we are.

-As the expedition recovers, they make plans for the final push to the Pacific.

They build canoes to carry them down the Columbia River into Oregon.

In late 1805, almost two years after the expedition launched, they finally reached the Pacific Ocean.

But with the snows coming, the party will have to endure winter along the coast.

And as they set up camp, an unprecedented event takes place amongst this oddly democratic group of travelers.

-York was a slave, but he was granted a vote when they decided to vote on which side of the Columbia River they were going to camp on.

Which is an interesting case, because it's the first instance where you have an African American person sort of voting historical record in the United States.

But once they returned to that seat of power, the power relationships went back to the way they were.

-Four months later, the expedition begins the long journey back home.

Along the way, the expedition splits into two exploration parties.

-Lewis, you know, comes down here to rendezvous.

He's in a hurry because he killed two Blackfeet teenagers.

They tried to steal Lewis' horse, and it created, you know, some obvious tension between the Blackfeet and the United States that had, you know, huge implications for later history.

-Once reunited, the two teams rush back down the Missouri River.

By September 1806, they arrived triumphant back where it all began -- Saint Louis.

And it's not long before they're telling President Jefferson the tale of their 8,000 mile journey.

♪♪ The expedition's success is a historic achievement in American history, but it was indebted to people like Sacajawea and the tribes who had always called this land home.

Sacajawea is thought to have died at the age of just 25.

In her own time, her part of the story was barely a footnote.

-I think just the fact that she was never given any credit in this expedition is also noteworthy.

To me, that speaks to the need to decolonize our histories.

This indigenous woman was responsible for one of the most critical exploration parties in the United States.

-Today, she is recognized as a symbol of strength and as an explorer, just like Lewis and Clark.

-Why are Lewis and Clark heroes to people?

They showed perseverance and strength.

I've grown up on the Lewis and Clark Trail.

I've seen the whole thing.

It's part of that -- that Western mythos now.

I think it's something that people feel is inclusive and patriotic.

And so it has meaning for some people in that they see themselves in it.

-Clark's cartography meant the West was no longer uncharted, and the expedition brought news of land rich in resources for those with the will and know-how to exploit them.

Many more began to follow in their footsteps.

♪♪ -The first mountaineers came out as a result of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

The main companies that were driving the economy in those days were great fur companies... ♪♪ ...who saw the riches that could be obtained by trading furs.

♪♪ I'd like to introduce myself.

My name is Doc Ivory.

I hail from southwest Montana territory.

I'm the capitán or the head of the American Mountain Men.

-The American Mountain Men of today honor the way of life lived by those men from 150 years ago that headed out into the wild in search of furs.

-And this rendezvous experience that the American Mountain Men do Once a year is just a way for us to keep history alive and live the wilderness skills of the original mountaineers that traversed this great country we call America.

-Mountain Men who head west find tribes who have forged complex trade relationships with the Spanish in the southwest, the British in the northwest, as well as other native tribes.

There was money to be made here, and with the beaver trade booming, those wild enough to take a shot couldn't miss an opportunity like this.

-In those days, gentlemen back east, to be in fashion, needed beaver hats.

And so the only place to find that in abundance was in the west, in the Rocky Mountains.

And they would trap out these little streams overnight and attempt to get 6 to 9 beaver a night.

-These adventurous fortune seekers began as lone fur trappers, but as stories of their exploits captured the imagination of readers back east, they become iconic figures known as Mountain Men.

-Those fur trappers were wilderness explorers, and they were known to each other as mountaineers.

It was a phrase that gave them honor as knowing the ways and pathways through the West.

-Just a few thousand trappers live in the vast West among native tribes like the Sioux, Apache, and Navajo.

But it could be a solitary life.

-Most of the men that chose to come out here to this dangerous life were castaways, basically, from society, some escaping legal problems and some just because they were looking for a niche.

Men of notable character, such as Thomas Fitzpatrick and Hugh Glass and Jim Bridger.

And they decided to come upriver and explore and enjoy their wanderlust of what was over that next hill.

-The West is a great equalizer of the common prejudices of the day.

-Jim Beckwourth is an African American man who is born to a wealthy slaveholder and an enslaved mother.

He quickly moves to the West with his father, becomes educated, and he gets into trapping.

And so he's really interested in this world in which he interacts with people like Native Americans.

-Mother nature has no prejudice, and survival is all that matters to Mountain Men.

-It's very much kind of an independent industry where people, especially, like, African descent, or kind of loners or outsiders, are able to kind of use their wits and use their experience, and it gives them really, I think, kind of a place in society that they wouldn't otherwise have.

-This period of history tends to lead one to believe that these men were masters of every survival situation, which is far from the truth.

Did they ever get lost?

Well, they may not have been totally lost, but they were disoriented for a while.

♪♪ There's a reason that mountaineers found things like Jim Bridger finding the Great Salt Lake.

Finding Yosemite Park by Joe Walker.

Finding Yellowstone Park.

Only about 16 out of 100 survived the winter.

And so it was a time to test your mettle, to regularly explore richness and a life of loneliness and a life of fasting almost constantly.

♪♪ -Whoa!

Attaboy.

-There you go.

[ Laughs ] -Attaboy.

I'm pretty doggone proud, because not only would they be able to secure game for us to eat fresh meat, it's also all within a kill zone.

While the Mountain Men had that wanderlust, they also knew that their cash product was obtaining beavers.

-Tens or even hundreds of millions of beavers lived in the country before European contact.

But trappers were so successful that the species was pushed to the brink of extinction.

-The interesting thing on the era of the fur trade was it was only maybe 40 years long -- 1800 to 1840.

Well, what could possibly end such a great lifestyle?

The problem was, the mountaineers were so prolific in their trapping ability that they trapped most of the beaver out.

But at the same time, fashion changed from being a beaver fur hat to a silk top hat.

And at that time, when that happened, the demand for beaver decreased dramatically.

-The era of the Mountain Man is coming to an end, but the knowledge they've gained and the connections they'd made beyond the frontier would prove invaluable in bridging two vastly different worlds.

-As people came west, the mountaineers transitioned from being trappers to guides.

-Others become intermediaries between native tribes and settlers.

-Jim Beckwith helps the crow in their military battles.

He turns out to have a military mind.

He is a scout for the U.S. Army, and so he actually kind of finds himself on both sides of this issue, helping native people, as well as helping the people looking to settle on native people's land.

These people who are able to kind of navigate various cultures are very important, essential in fact.

So people who otherwise maybe wouldn't be accepted because they don't kind of fit into the racial hierarchy are useful in these situations.

And so, like black men, especially, who find themselves free or who run away, are able to really kind of exploit this to become important, to gain wealth and to create community.

-A lot of the men out West became famous in their own right.

Kit Carson, for me, was an was an interesting character.

Kit Carson, he came into the fur trade, saw the fur trade very well, but he also saw that the West was transitioning as Army came in, as immigrants came in.

-Like many of his fellow Mountain Men, Kit Carson was illiterate, but he could read what was written in the stars.

The West was changing.

-Kit Carson was born in the early 19th century in Kentucky, moved with his family to Missouri, was apprenticed as a teenager to a saddle maker.

Did not enjoy that at all.

And so basically lit out for the West.

Throughout his career in the West, he was a wagon master, he was a fur trapper, he was an Army scout and spy, he was an Indian agent, he married three women, the first two of them native Arapaho women and one Cheyenne woman, before he married his third wife.

He fought against native people in army campaigns and also civilian campaigns as well.

I mean, he really did all of the things that we think of as iconic in the Western frontiersman experience.

-Kit Carson's life transformed with a chance meeting with an aspiring explorer, topographer, and military officer, John C. Fremont.

-John C. Fremont was known as the Pathfinder of the American West.

He conducted a series of expeditions into the American West.

The first one was in 1842.

He's working for the federal government, trying to find overland routes.

-Their first mission is mapping the course of a new wagon trail that branches off the old Santa Fe Trail and all the way to Wyoming.

It is the first section of what would become the legendary Oregon Trail.

Kit Carson is uniquely qualified for his role.

-I would describe Kit Carson more as a cultural broker.

One of these figures in the West who spoke multiple native languages.

He spoke Spanish.

He spoke a little bit of French.

He could not read or write, but he could engage with people personally, face-to-face, with people he didn't really know.

He also just had a range of expertise.

He was a very good marksman.

Within a few years, he'd been all over the West.

He knew where he was going.

-With Carson leading the way, Fremont's first trip is a success.

When he returns to Washington and writes about what he's seen, the man who led him across the country is one of the heroes of his story.

-In 1845, Fremont wrote an account of his previous explorations, in which he described Kit Carson for the first time to the nation and lauded him as a scout and his abilities as an Indian fighter.

And this was really the first moment that Americans found out about Kit Carson.

-Kit Carson will show up again and again in Western history, a fact not missed by the media of the day.

-Newspaper reporters kind of picked up on the fact that he was there, knew about him from Fremont's accounts, and started to publicize him as well.

And the first dime novels that starred Kit Carson came out very soon thereafter.

You know, none of these were based in fact.

They sort of took him and his name as this figure in the West and really amped up his reputation as this very typical, rugged individualist frontiersman who, to many Americans, kind of typified all of these great American ideals -- perseverance and freedom and individualism, making your way in this new land of opportunity.

-Stories like Kit's and Tales of Life out West inspire a nation.

♪♪ Fremont and Carson go on to map the second half of the Oregon Trail all the way to the Columbia River and into Oregon.

Basing their route on a patchwork of old trails, their work ignites a mass immigration unprecedented in history.

-So Fremont's expeditions are really critical to setting, like, the literal and figurative groundwork for what becomes the Oregon Trail.

My name is Sarah Keyes, and I'm a professor of history.

I focus on the history of the U.S. West, particularly the 19th century, and the Overland Trail.

-Wagons from across the east pick up stakes and head west... ...out along the Oregon Trail in search of a new life.

-The maps that are created as a result of his expeditions, as well as the narrative of his journeys, basically become the guides for later immigrants who are going to come in much greater numbers in the late 1840's and early 1850's.

They are walking in his footsteps.

If you were in the 1840's and you were living in New York, there is no way that you want to hear about how to take a journey to the West, because it's just simply everywhere in popular culture.

You might see an advertisement in a newspaper for a company asking for members to join.

-There's the promise of freedom and fortune for those brave enough to traverse the Oregon Trail.

It stretches 2,170 miles from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean.

Inspired by the gold rush or the promise of free land, thanks to the Homestead Act, of course, the first wave of emigrants set out for Oregon Country in 1841, in ox-pulled wagons.

-When people think of the trail, they often think of a few small trains of wagons, sort of like rumbling towards the west.

This was actually a very crowded route, particularly in 1849 to 1855.

One traveler likened it to Broadway, right, of New York City.

That's how crowded it was.

-Romantic descriptions of land as unoccupied and brimming with wealth and opportunity draws eager adventurers from all walks of life.

-The immigration was diverse.

We have newspapers reporting on the fact that they have old and young people, black and white people, people from the United States, people who've recently arrived from Europe.

They're all converging into these small jumping off points, and then they're spreading out across the plains together.

If you think about sort of the sounds of the crowd, even, it's much more diverse than simply people speaking English.

-What makes this journey possible is the cutting edge technology first invented by German Mennonites -- the Conestoga wagon.

It is an icon of the Oregon Trail.

-The Conestoga is about 4 foot wide by 12 foot long.

Roughly 1,500, 2,000 pounds of your life.

I mean, this right here is a family's life.

Average price would have run $4-- to $600, which would equate to about 15,000 today.

The second one would be the Prairie Schooner, which is a lot faster, lighter, and can kind of sail across the prairie.

-For many, the trek west is the experience of a lifetime.

-So being on the trail is sort of this combination of being really, really bored and really, really tired and really, really, really excited, and doing, like, the best thing you've ever done.

If you read Fremont's journal, you have a copy with you on the trail.

You're looking for those next landmarks.

You're looking for those big rocky outcroppings.

You want to see independence Rock in Wyoming.

So you might be able to go up there.

You might be able to write your name as well.

And in writing your name, you're saying, "Hey, I was here, I did this."

-But the Oregon Trail is fraught with danger.

-Settlers are worried about a lot of things on the trail, and some of those are really specific to being out in the West.

So the wilderness or they have this racist fear of native peoples.

But even the fact that you might get caught in a violent thunderstorm on the plain.

You can have hail so big and so powerful it simply rips through wagon covers.

Maybe you were going over a river that seemed like it was passable.

And then a big storm will come in, and all of a sudden you're stuck on the other side of this, become a much higher, much more turgid stream.

And you might not be able to swim, but it's your job to get across.

-Weapon misfires, scurvy, stampedes, and wagon accidents kill many people.

-But they also have sort of a constant fear that attends everyone's life in the 19th century.

And that's the fear of disease.

-Cholera is the most common cause of death.

-Getting cholera anywhere is horrific.

Getting cholera on the trails is, like, horrific times a million.

And it's like that because you have absolutely no comfort.

So cholera is a bacteria and basically it works by rapidly dehydrating your body.

This is going to cause rapid discoloration.

It's known as the blue terror for this very reason that its victims will turn blue.

So you can imagine having this disease when you're not at home.

You're in a company that wants to continue on as quickly as possible, and you might be simply laid up in a wagon while you're experiencing these symptoms.

-Over 12,000 travelers may have died from disease alone.

Despite the risks, settlers venture across the plains for a chance to remake their lives.

-In all, historians have estimated that for the Oregon and California trails from 1840 to 1860, maybe as many as 250,000 people traveled.

But the stories they told about them became this sort of outsized event in both academic history and in popular memory.

-The Oregon Trail becomes a symbol of Western promise.

But for some, the trail is an escape route.

-Utah and Mormon history has often been ignored in the histories of the American West.

I'm Jedediah Rogers, I'm a senior state historian with the Utah Division of State History.

And we're on the eastern edge of what John C. Fremont first called the Great Basin.

-Like the pilgrims that set out for the New World, many believers head west, seeking religious refuge, land where they can live and pray as they please.

In upstate New York, a radical new religion is taking root that will eventually lead its followers to flee West.

-Mormonism was born in the early 19th century.

Joseph Smith, who was the founder of Mormonism, claimed to have received plates made of gold that contained engravings of the record of an ancient people.

He was shown them by an angel.

He later claimed to have transcribed that record, published it in 1830 as "The Book of Mormon".

All of these forms started the foundations of the movement that we call Mormonism, and the establishment of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

-As the church's influence spreads, Smith sets up communities in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois.

But some unorthodox practices bring trouble for the Mormons.

Polygamy was especially unpopular in the young United States.

Tensions reach a boiling point in 1844, when Smith orders the destruction of a newspaper that accuses him of the practice.

He is arrested for inciting a riot.

But Joseph Smith never makes it to trial.

In 1844, a mob stormed the jail and murdered the so-called prophet.

♪♪ ♪♪ -After Joseph Smith dies, the church splinters.

The largest group to emerge from that splintering was led by Brigham Young.

-The Mormons have nowhere to turn but west.

They spend two years looking for their very own Zion.

Finally, a troop of Mormon scouts bring Brigham Young word of a great salt lake in an isolated basin outside the reach of the United States government.

-The Great Salt Lake was the most identifiable landform.

Early 1846, Brigham Young leads the largest group of Mormons over the Mississippi River.

They were using maps that John C. Fremont had published in 1845.

Part of the lure of Mormon settlement is that Brigham Young says he has seen this place in vision, that he -- that he knew that this was the right place, this is where the Mormons were to settle.

He wanted a place that he knew would be -- would be isolated.

And this certainly was that place.

The Mormons coming into the West is -- is quite different from the typical scenario.

So instead of just individual families, the Mormons came in mass.

-But the close knit community under Brigham Young's theocracy couldn't stay out of the reach of the U.S. forever.

-In 1850, Utah received territorial status.

Brigham Young was appointed as governor of Utah Territory.

And you start to see this conflict between the federal government and the Mormon people.

James Buchanan, in May of 1857, decides to send federal troops to the territory of Utah to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with a new appointee.

-A Mormon militia meets U.S. troops.

But the conflict, known as the Utah War, fizzles out quickly.

And in the aftermath of the standoff with the federal government, concessions made by the Mormons will ultimately lead the church to outlaw the practice of polygamy.

Utah eventually becomes a state and a unique part of the Union in 1896.

-There are a lot of myths and ideologies that are built up around narratives of pioneers as heroic settlers bringing civilization to the West.

It's not that myth is necessarily false.

It's, you know, myths give us a sense of identity.

They provide a sense of belonging, but they also leave quite a lot out, and they become quite simplistic in their rendering of the past.

It kind of creates this conundrum for me.

I mean, on the one hand, I really revere my pioneer ancestors.

On the other hand, I recognize the legacy is not always, you know, as rosy as we might want it to be.

So in that way, we're very much in common with other communities around the West.

-Mass migration along the Oregon Trail means that by 1840, 7 million settlers are living west of the Appalachian Mountains.

But for those who had called this land home for thousands of years, the Great American migration is a tragedy.

-Learning about the Oregon Trail was learning about how great the pioneers were, and how determined they were to turn the wilderness into civilization.

And sitting there as an indigenous child, knowing what that Oregon Trail did for our people and what it did to the bison, what it did to the elk and to the moose and to our medicine patches, our berry patches, it was a very difficult history.

And so, to celebrate the Oregon Trail and the Santa Fe Trail are really to celebrate the demise of indigenous peoples.

-Seeing crowds of immigrants headed into your homelands and headed across vital grasses and waters that you know you need to sustain yourself is terrifying.

This is a migration that radically transforms the landscape.

It's a seasonal migration, but the effects are -- are year long because of the resource devastation that immigrants wrought on the resources that native peoples need.

And really, the biggest fear that native peoples have of the immigrants is the disease that they bring.

Simply thinking about positioning yourself rather than looking toward California and Oregon, looking east, what might it be like to see a wagon train coming towards you if you're living on the plains?

What might it be like to live in a place that has plenty of grass for your animals, for your horses, that has plenty of ecological resources to maintain, for example, bison, herds that you might hunt, and what happens when a massive crowd of people blows through during the summer and then those grasses are decimated?

So thinking about taking that perspective of people who are living in those places, native peoples, what does that mean to our understanding of the trail?

To think about switching our perspective from west to east.

-More and more people seek new lives along the Oregon or Santa Fe Trails.

The promise of the West inspires would-be pioneers to leave their farms from as far afield as Germany, Ireland, and Scandinavia.

It's a uniquely American technique of colonizing land.

-This removal of indigenous groups, the murder, the genocide of indigenous groups to make way for settlers, to make way for these waves of immigrants to come through and claim the land, is settler colonialism.

-In 1830, President Andrew Jackson begins aggressively enforcing the Indian Removal Act, moving the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations into foreign lands in the western United States.

To thousands of natives, it is a death sentence.

It becomes known as the Trail of Tears.

[ Thunder rumbling ] [ Horse neighing ] -We often learn about the Oregon Trail and the Santa Fe Trail, but we very rarely learn about the Trail of Tears or the Long Walk.

We -- We don't hear about those other forced removals of indigenous peoples.

We were forced, as indigenous peoples, through war, through famine, through biological warfare, to sign treaties.

And all of them were broken.

We were forced to sign these treaties as a way to survive.

And even then we were subjected to removal from our traditional lands onto lands that were sometimes completely foreign to us.

-Despite everything indigenous people endured, the fight was not over.

-There has been a consistent narrative that indigenous peoples are disappearing.

Right?

And so if we look at my own field, anthropology and archaeology, we see a long line of scholars who have pointed to language loss and culture loss and the disappearing Indian.

We haven't lost the spirit of who we are because of our blood memory.

Our ancestor's blood is in us.

It runs through our bodies and it connects us to where we are now.

And that's what we have to remember.

When we hear "Land Back", when we hear all of these things -- "You're on indigenous land" -- it's with that recognition of reclaiming what was ours.

But it's also with restoring that, because that is part of our sacred responsibility as indigenous peoples, as the stewards of this land, is to care for it and to make sure that it's here for the next generations.

-Today, a new generation of indigenous men and women are at the forefront of the Land Back Movement.

-My name is Naelyn Pike, and I am San Carlos Apache, but more specifically, I'm Chiricahua Apache.

Right now, we're in a time of trying to preserve our religion, our way of life, and our language.

Right now, where I'm standing is on our Apache holy site.

We believe that we come from here, which is Chi'chil Bildagoteel, and this is this place, Oak Flat.

For Apache people, Oak Flat is that direct connection, the corridor to our spiritual connection to our creator.

And so it's a pivotal and critical part of our spirituality as Apache people.

What was taught to me by my grandmother, my great grandmother, my grandfather, is that we were a free people.

We were a nomadic people, people who lived free and wild and were entwined with the earth.

And when we have that connection cut off, then our people won't live.

Our people won't survive.

A tree can't grow without its roots.

-The Apache have been fighting for their lands ever since American settlers came west.

-At one point, the Apache people would allow settlers to come through Apache territory until they found gold, copper, and silver.

And that is really when our people were put as prisoners of war.

-In 1875, the free moving Apache people are forced far from their traditional lands and into the barren desert of Arizona to the San Carlos Reservation.

-San Carlos was called Hell's 40 acres, because it was the 40 acres of land and a place for the worst in Arizona.

And it was because there was no animals, no water, no plants.

-Led by famous warriors like Geronimo, bands of Apaches repeatedly break free of the reservation to wage war with the U.S., but in 1886, Geronimo becomes the last native leader to surrender.

His people continue to fight today, especially for the sacred grounds of Oak Flat, which has been taken over by a mining company.

-For a couple of decades now, the area of Oak Flat and its surrounding areas has been attacked.

So there are two huge mining corporations, and they created this project to mine underneath Oak Flat, which is our Holy Land.

Right now, what I'm standing on is apparently the largest copper ore in North America.

And the method of mining that they want to do is the block cave mining method.

Eventually it will create a crater.

It's going to be estimated two miles wide, as deep as the Eiffel Tower.

Our spirituality, our -- literally our connection to the earth is going to be extracted with the copper.

-Naelyn, her family, and the Apache stronghold have fought the development for the last ten years, but the fight for survival has gone on for generations.

-I was born in this fight.

Me breathing, me standing here is a reminder to the United States government that they had failed in their tactics to exterminate my people.

I still feel that fight, that warrior in me.

It runs through my blood, and I believe that it runs through any native child, but any indigenous person who is alive.

We have that fire.

And I'm a firm believer that what my ancestors did for me, I should do for the future generations too.

♪♪ -It's amazing to see it, to see these younger generations who have no fear of the way that we had fear instilled in us of the federal government.

And to see... to see these youth, these water protectors, these land protectors, to see them doing what they're doing, it makes me so proud.

And no matter how hard they try and how hard they have tried, we will always be here.

We will always fight as indigenous folks.

-It is in this spirit that the 12 Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation come together every year.

♪♪ -When I am racing in the Omak Stampede Race, it is a spiritual experience.

So many of our traditions are lost.

This is one of them that we still carry on, is horse racing or horse culture, and to be at one with them is such a sacred thing.

♪♪ It is a great honor to feel that connection.

My name is Audrey Rose Seymour.

I'm a Colville tribal member, and I'm here this year at the Omak Stampede Race.

♪♪ -Members of the Colville Reservation consider the race the continuation of a centuries old tradition, from a time when young braves raced down mountains on horseback.

-The Omak Stampede Race is the race that has been run within our tribe since the beginning of time, since the beginning of horses, and we've held annual races since the reservations were created.

-Just 18 finalists qualify from dozens of hopefuls.

They compete over four days in a series of dangerous and dramatic races.

♪♪ -To be the only female rider in the Omak Stampede Race, at first, I faced a lot of adversity and naysayers, but I'm trying to make a statement not only for me, but for future generations to follow in my footsteps and let them know that nothing can stop them.

[ Cheering ] Just keep following your dreams.

To be one of those warriors to go off the hill, race your horse in front of thousands, and to honor your people and honor our ancestors in that way with among the best riders and bull riders and bronc riders and all around cowboys in the world, is an honor for me to even be here.

-To come off that hill at a full tilt, you're getting the feel of your horse.

You're not two, you're one.

You're a combo, 'cause you're heart-to-heart.

You know.

It goes all the way back from being warrior Scouts.

One of my great, great grandpas, he was like one of the horse chiefs.

It's in our blood.

Running this race, having the -- having the horse scent on you, you know, it's just like, it's... it's our Cologne, you know?

It's our -- It's our life.

I'm third generation.

My son, he's the fourth generation.

So there's -- there's some big bloodline in this year.

You know.

I said that to myself, that, yeah, I'm going to be up there one day.

And now what do you know?

I'm sitting on the sidelines.

And now my son, he's filling my boots.

And here we are.

He's the new king of the hill.

I'm -- I'm -- [ Chuckles ] It's -- It's slowly sinking in right now, but I'm -- [Laughs] I'm trying not to get choked up.

If I do, it's -- it's tears of happiness.

-Indigenous roots run deep here in Washington.

But the survival of these tribes has taken tremendous resilience in the face of overwhelming odds.

-Even though they put us on these reservations, in these bounded places, we knew how to survive, and that's really the strength of indigenous people, is our resiliency.

We are adaptive, and wherever and whatever has been thrown at us, we've been able to adapt and to maintain who we are.

This seventh generation are going to change this world for all of us.

And we're seeing it.

We're seeing that they are sacrificing themselves for all of us, not just us as indigenous people, but all of us here on this earth.

And that's where my hope is.

-From the moment Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea first stepped into the wild, America was changed.

Over the course of 50 years, a trickle of frontiersmen became a flood of settlers.

But the western era was not a century of serene exploration and adventure.

It was a time of violence and conquest, and as a young nation sought to manifest its destiny, war for the West was inevitable.

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