♪♪ ♪♪ -♪ There's a traveling wildfire ♪ ♪♪ -The Wild West.

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

-♪ You can see it tearing up the mountainside ♪ -But the true history of the West was a lot more diverse, a lot more complex, and a heck of a lot more interesting than we've been led to believe.

This continent was home to over 300 tribes for 10,000 years.

But once Lewis and Clark crossed the country, mappers, trappers, and settlers followed.

Destiny was up for grabs.

And in the wars for the West, Texas fights to become a republic, the U.S. conquers Mexico, a guerrilla war is fought over slavery in Kansas.

the Civil War spills into the West, emancipated Americans seek new lives in soldiery or saddlery, and a country reunited wages relentless war against native nations.

Before the West was won, it was fought for.

For millennia, there were no defined borders divvying up this land.

But after the arrival of Europeans, France, England, Spain, and even Russia claimed territories on the continent.

But since the Louisiana Purchase, the United States has been the colonial power to be reckoned with.

♪♪ ♪♪ -I am Megan Kate Nelson.

I am a historian and I write about the West.

I think anytime we want to learn about the past, we should want to learn about its dirtiness and its grittiness and its complexities.

-In a time marred by conflict and colonialism, one phrase rang out which would come to define the era -- "Manifest Destiny."

-The phrase "Manifest Destiny" comes from a newspaper editorial from 1845 advocating for the annexation of Texas to the United States.

John O'Sullivan said that it was America's destiny to move westward, to expand its boundaries as far as it could.

-The mantra will come to dominate an explosive period.

And the fuse for conflicts to come was lit in Texas.

[ Gunshot ] In 1821, after centuries of colonial rule, Mexico casts out the Spanish and becomes an independent republic.

Mexico lays claim to vast swaths of land across the continent, but they are loosely held.

Tejanos, settlers of Spanish or Mexican descent, lived in the territory known as Tejas for centuries, but by the 1800s, fewer than 3,000 Tejanos are living in this far-flung territory of Mexico.

And they're not the only people who called this land home.

-Nowhere in the U.S. was the land unclaimed, because indigenous people had it.

There was always the threat of indigenous attacks or indigenous rebellions, and that is partly why the population of Spanish colonists remained low.

My name is Omar Valerio-Jimenez.

I'm a professor of history at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

My research focuses on borderlands, Mexican-Americans, the U.S. West, and immigration.

-To gain a stronger foothold in land traditionally ruled by the Comanche and other tribes, Mexico needs settlers to stake claims in Tejas, so they look to their neighbors in the North, and land-hungry Americans are happy to oblige.

-The Mexican government, after independence, begins a colonization program, and their colonization program is to invite Americans and Europeans to colonize, to come to Texas, as long as they become Mexican citizens and they follow Mexican laws.

Americans are expanding westward very rapidly, and along the South, they are expanding westward to create more markets for slaves and for slavery.

So Anglo-Americans jump on the idea of coming to Texas.

-The trickle of settlers to Tejas soon becomes a flood.

Those Americans come to be known as Texians.

-The colonization program is really very successful in the sense of bringing Anglo-Americans, but perhaps too successful, because by the early 1830s, Anglo-Americans outnumber Mexican Texans by factors of 7-to-1.

There's about 30,000 Anglo-Americans in Texas, between 4,000 and 6,000 Tejanos, or Mexican Texans, and there's about 5,000 slaves that Anglo Texans had brought into Texas.

-But when Mexico abolishes slavery in 1829, a full three decades before the U.S., war was inevitable.

-Anglo-Americans are very upset about this, because their economy is starting to become more and more dependent on slavery.

-Slaveholding Americans begin to chafe under the rule of a distant Mexican government.

In addition, Tejanos resent centralized control from Mexico City.

Whispers of rebellion soon spread.

Tensions boil over when shots are exchanged between Texians and Mexican troops in the town of Gonzales.

But Mexico won't let Tejas go without a fight.

Mexican President Santa Anna takes on the role of general.

He is determined to handle the rebels himself.

After a number of clashes, Tejano and Mexican forces meet at the Mission San Antonio de Valero, better known as the Alamo.

Mexican troops show up in force.

Those inside the Alamo are vastly outnumbered.

Santa Anna lays siege for 12 days, and on day 13, the infamous battle begins.

-The battle is between about 150 rebels and some civilians in the Alamo complex, and on the other side, something like 1,800 to 2,000 Mexican troops.

Among the most significant icons that people remember about the Alamo battle are William B. Travis, Davy Crockett, and James Bowie.

-But famous names couldn't change the fate of those trapped inside the Alamo's walls.

Santa Anna's soldiers pour into the mission complex through a breach in the perimeter wall.

-Santa Anna orders his troops to attack, and it's over within a couple of hours.

Most of the Alamo defenders are killed.

A few of them surrender, and they're killed later.

-Only the women and children are spared and survive to pass on their stories.

The Alamo was a devastating defeat, but it energizes the revolution.

Just two months later, Texian troops rally under the cries of "Remember the Alamo" as they defeat Santa Anna's armies at the Battle of San Jacinto.

Santa Anna himself is captured.

In exchange for his life, he orders the retreat of Mexican forces south of the Rio Grande.

Victory leads to the establishment of an independent and sovereign Republic of Texas.

Today, descendants of Texian and Tejano revolutionaries remember the Alamo as a tipping point in the history of the West.

-[ Singing in Spanish ] -But the Alamo is only the start.

Greater wars for the West are about to kick off as the U.S. begins to flex its military might.

After nearly a decade of independence, the Lone Star Republic is unrecognized by Mexico and coveted by the United States.

In March of 1845, President John Tyler offers Texas annexation and a place in the union.

It would cause Mexico to sever diplomatic ties with the U.S.

But Tyler's successor is a man with even greater ambitions for the expansion of the United States.

-James K. Polk was elected in 1844 to the presidency, based on a platform of Manifest Destiny and annexation.

-Polk is an agent of Manifest Destiny.

He is determined to expand the borders of the United States by any means necessary, and that means completing the annexation of Texas.

-At first, he wanted to buy Texas' freedom.

Those negotiations went nowhere, and so he turned pretty quickly to military conflict.

He sent soldiers down to the border of Texas and Mexico and just kind of waiting there and spoiling for a fight.

And a pretty minor clash gave him the excuse he needed.

-When Mexican cavalry attacks U.S. soldiers at the disputed border, all pretense of peace is abandoned.

America invades, and the Mexican-American War begins.

-For the next year and a half, two years, the United States waged its first real, true war of conquest against another nation.

-President Polk is driven by the dream of uniting the country from coast to coast, a dream that would mean the conquest of Mexican-controlled California.

♪♪ -When I grew up, I was a history nerd, but I never really learned about the sort of Hispanic-Mexican aspect of this story.

My name is Carlos Francisco Parra, and I am an expert in U.S.-Mexico border history and Mexican-American history.

We're at Pío Pico State Historical Park in the heart of East Los Angeles.

-Before Mexican independence, Alta California was a distant province of New Spain, but residents had a history and culture all their own and identified as Californios.

-The cultures that were there before had a very rich mixed-race ancestry.

People who may have had Spanish backgrounds from their roots as conquistadors, or Spanish colonists, as well as indigenous Mexican tribes.

-It took 10 years of struggle, but Mexico finally wins its independence from Spain in 1821 and takes California with it.

-By the time that Mexico became an independent country, there was this liberal 19th century idea that there should not be racial distinctions anymore.

It should not matter that an individual had indigenous background.

All people should be equal citizens.

-This ideal would be realized in the election of Pío Pico as governor.

-We know that the Pico family had certainly Spanish indigenous, African backgrounds, making them a very diverse family.

Pío Jesús Pico lived under the Spanish Empire, the early Mexican Republic.

Pío Jesús Pico is famous for living a life emblematic of the changes that California as a whole experienced.

-But after America turned its sights on California, Pío Pico was destined to be the last governor of Mexican-controlled California.

-Pico assumed the governorship.

There were already rumblings that the United States was preparing for war against California.

♪♪ -My name is Brian Manifor.

I have Hispanic heritage that goes back to early Los Angeles.

And after becoming a Marine officer, it really rejuvenated and renewed my interest in the Mexican War and engagements that happened in Southern California.

President Polk, who had always had his eyes on California and the Western states, sent Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, with 1,600 men, which would later become known as the Army of the West.

-In 1846, the Americans decide to attack Mexico on three key fronts.

General and later president Zachary Taylor leads his troops toward Mexico's Rio Grande.

Meanwhile, Commander Winfield Scott sails his troops to invade Northern Mexico, while General Kearny marches his army west.

After taking Santa Fe in New Mexico without firing a shot, Kearny's next target is California.

-General Kearny's Army of the West was headed to California with the sole purpose of annexing the land from the country of Mexico.

-Along the road, Kearny and his men bump into a man already famous back east, Kit Carson.

Carson had been with John C. Frémont on his unauthorized military engagements in Northern California.

Kearny insists Carson join them on their march.

-Kit Carson, at the time, told him that there shouldn't be any problems, that the Californians basically would retreat without firing a shot.

Kearny makes the fateful decision to send back 200 of his dragoons -- mounted dragoons -- back to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

-Believing Californian resistance is nearly over, Kearny, Kit, and a bedraggled force with just 100 mounted men marched the 1,000 miles from the Rio Grande to California.

They believe an easy victory lies in wait.

News of the approaching Americans makes Governor Pío Pico flee to Baja, where he pleads with Mexican generals to send troops to help defend California, while his brother Andrés Pico leads the defense against the Army of the West.

-Mexican forces under the command of General Pico were made up of local ranch owners, California vaqueros, as they like to call them, local cowboys.

They were all here on their own accord.

This was basically their backyard.

And the Mexican vaqueros brought with them a very unique skill set.

All of them were very accomplished horsemen.

They had perfected a number of techniques raising cattle, and those same techniques and procedures and tools that they used were later turned to warfare here on the battlefield.

-On a cold, damp morning in December 1846, a ragged Army of the West has just completed the longest march in U.S. military history.

But they will get no respite here.

-Right before sun-up, General Kearny and his forces are assembled on the hills overlooking the San Pasqual Valley.

U.S. dragoons are moving in a strung-out fashion over the course of a mile and a half, with the lead elements thinking they're supposed to charge and the rear elements thinking they're supposed to trot.

And the Californio forces see this and realize that their opportunity to strike is at hand.

General Pico had told his vaqueros to fire once and then go to either the sword or to the lance.

What ensues over the next 15 minutes is essentially a hand-to-hand life-and-death struggle.

You have 18 U.S. dragoons and a volunteer that are lassoed out of their saddles and then, while incapacitated, are lanced.

General Kearny himself had been lanced two times and was now in a state where he was slipping in and out of consciousness.

And they make the decision to retreat to a small hill on the southern edge of the valley.

-Surrounded and all but defeated, the next morning, the American troops scrambled to take higher ground in a desperate bid for survival.

-So, I'm currently sitting on one of the boulders in what is known as Mule Hill.

They displace the California forces that are here and they dig in to basically fortify their position.

This became etched into the minds of the dragoons forever as one of the toughest few nights that most of them have ever spent in their life.

They were faced with having no water, starvation, hence the name Mule Hill, where they had to eat some of the mules.

One final mission is set up to go down to San Diego in the form of Kit Carson, a Navy lieutenant, and a Native American scout, whose name has been lost to history.

And so these three start out for San Diego, which is 27 miles to our south.

-They have one chance to save their men, but only if they get reinforcements from the U.S. Navy stationed on the coast.

-Over the course of the next 48 hours, they have to make it through two or three lines of Mexican sentries.

They all lose their boots.

Kit Carson, in some of his later recollections, talks about it being one of the toughest things he ever did.

All of the couriers showed up in San Diego.

So the message does get through to Commodore Stockton, and he immediately dispatches a relief force of around 200 U.S. Navy sailors and Marines, which later hike up here under the cover of darkness and break the siege.

-As Kearny recovers after the conflict at San Pasqual, his army wins two decisive battles near Los Angeles, and the fight for California would be over within weeks.

But the Mexican-American War doesn't end with California.

American troops march all the way to Mexico City and force a Mexican surrender that ends with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Now, the territories of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming all become sanctioned territories of the United States.

In contrast to his war against Mexico, President Polk used his diplomacy to finalize a treaty with Britain in the summer of 1848, and Oregon officially becomes a U.S. territory.

America has finally manifested its destiny.

It now occupies the continent from east to west.

The next great flash point wasn't to be over land... but people.

Divisions over the issue of slavery had begun bubbling to the surface in newly formed territories like Kansas.

Here, the debate dividing the country turns violent.

-I think there's a good argument to be made that the Civil War really has its roots right here on the Kansas-Missouri border.

So, 1854, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas introduces a bill that is going to take part of the Louisiana Purchase territory and organize it into the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.

What was very controversial about this bill is something embedded within it called popular sovereignty, this idea that people within the territories could decide for themselves whether to be a territory that allowed slavery or not.

It is an era that is marked with violence that goes all the way to the House and Senate floors.

You have legislators who are coming to the House floor armed.

They are beating each other in places where we're supposed to be making laws.

And this was going to be the spark that was going to ignite a powder keg in Kansas.

-Bleeding Kansas was what occurred after the Kansas-Nebraska act was signed in 1854 and pro-slavery and free-state men came to Kansas to determine whether it would be a free state or a slave state, because, suddenly, that was going to be up to a vote.

My name is Kerry Altenbernd, and I'm a third-generation native of Kansas.

I also portray the abolitionist John Brown.

The question of whether Kansas would become a free state or a slave state was critical to the history of the United States.

-As abolitionists and Free Staters come from the East to cast their ballots against slavery, pro-slavery voters pour into Kansas to swing the vote.

But the battle would not be confined to the voting booth, and the conflict between pro- and anti-slavery supporters turns violent.

-Right now, we're in the Blackjack Battlefield.

Battle of Blackjack was really the first battle in the American Civil War.

[ Gunshots ] This is where the first battle between people on opposing sides of that slavery issue fought anywhere in the United States.

[ Shouting, gunshots ] -For two years, the sides trade blows.

-Serious bloodshed broke out, violence, all kinds of trouble.

So much trouble, they dubbed this area "Bleeding Kansas."

♪♪ These were not military men.

They were militias.

And when the blood started flowing, Bleeding Kansas was mainly guerrilla warfare.

-Militias closer to gangs are carrying out brutal guerrilla attacks against one another.

These skirmishes would set the stage for the Civil War.

And it's where many famous military men first make their names.

-Many of the people in Bleeding Kansas went on to national fame.

Jeb Stuart, who was the cavalry commander for Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War.

Bill Hickok was in Kansas.

He was a free-state man, an abolitionist.

Another one was Jesse James and his brother Frank.

They were Missourians and they were pro-slavery and they rode with some of the guerrillas in Bleeding Kansas.

-But it's the actions of John Brown that captures the national attention.

-John Brown was born in May 9, 1800, into a family of abolitionists.

When he was 12, he saw a friend, a young black boy, beaten by his master with a metal coal shovel.

He couldn't stop the beating, but he swore to himself that he would work the rest of his life to end slavery.

John Brown let everybody know that his family were abolitionists that believed that all men and all women are brothers and sisters and that once our black brothers and sisters are freed from the bondage, they will join us in this nation as full and equal citizens.

And that wasn't a popular notion.

And John Brown did what he had to do, which was stay and fight.

-Eventually, violent threats against his family from his pro-slavery enemies provoked John Brown to take radical actions that would go on to make him infamous.

-Brown had done some intelligence work and had found out that these neighbors of his, some of them, intended to take his sons and him out and massacre them.

On the night of the 24th and 25th of May, 1854, five of those pro-slavery men were pulled out of their beds along Pottawatomie Creek in what's been called the Pottawatomie Massacre.

The widow of one of the men described the leader as someone that looked like John Brown, and that's why people say John Brown was a homicidal maniac, bloodthirsty, killed innocent farmers.

None of which was true.

But the fact that he was defending his family and other free-state men is lost to, mostly, history.

-After years of chaos in this gateway to the West, the Free Staters finally capture the vote, as pro-slavery forces head south to await the impending Civil War.

-Kansas came into the union as a free state on January 29, 1861.

-The battle for Kansas was over, but the war for the country is just beginning.

-Keeping Kansas history alive is important to me because it is a national story.

The story of what happened at Blackjack, the story of what happened in Kansas had such an effect on the nation at the time.

The Civil War would not have been when it was had it not been for what happened in Kansas.

-Anti- and pro-slavery tensions come to a head following the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Ultimately, 11 states leave the union and form a confederacy under Jefferson Davis.

And when shots are fired at Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861, the nation is plunged into all-out war.

-Whenever we talk about the coming of the Civil War, we're always talking about the expansion of slavery into the territories, which are all, at this point, in the West.

Then the guns fire on Fort Sumter, and it's like the West doesn't exist anymore in the eyes of many historians and also the American popular consciousness.

The West is erased from the maps, but, actually, the West was still very much a part of the picture.

-Thousands die at Antietam, Vicksburg, and Gettysburg, and here at Fort Union, New Mexico, remnants of the Civil War in the West serve as a reminder of this forgotten front.

-Both the North and the South wanted control of the West.

They wanted it for its gold.

They wanted it for access to Pacific ports.

The North and the South still had -- They shared this American sense of the West as the future, that this is going to be a place where they are going to expand the nation.

And for Northerners, that meant a nation of liberty, a nation without slavery, and for Southerners, it meant an empire of slavery.

So they had those goals in mind and, in fact, fought several battles in New Mexico Territory in order to settle the question of who controls the West.

-Confederate forces begin to plan their campaign to conquer the West.

-This was the brainchild of Henry Hopkins Sibley, who was a career military man.

He basically pitched Jefferson Davis this idea of creating this Texas army that would secure New Mexico Territory and that this would create a thoroughfare to California, and then the Confederacy would be truly a continental nation.

Jefferson Davis was completely on board with this plan.

In the summer of 1861, as part of that plan, the Confederate Army forced the surrender of Fort Fillmore, with 400 federal soldiers in it, and then returned on August 1st, created the Confederate Territory of Arizona.

-Encouraged by their success in Arizona, Confederate General Sibley launches an army of 3,000 Texans to push into New Mexico.

-In February, they started moving north.

This resulted in the Battle of Valverde on February 21st, a battle that the Confederates won.

The Confederates went on to take Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and so the next target was Fort Union.

And Sibley really needed to take all of the supplies here.

-What the Confederates don't know is that Fort Union held not only supplies, but Union troops.

[ Horse neighs ] -A contingent of Colorado gold miners arrived in early March.

They had heard about the taking of Albuquerque and Santa Fe and they were going to meet them in the fight.

They were led by a Colorado lawyer named John Slough, who had no military training at all.

But he was a lawyer, so he'd read a lot of books.

And this came in handy when they finally met the Confederates at Glorieta Pass.

-Glorieta Pass is a brutal three-day battle where over 350 men die.

-The Confederates actually won the battle, but Slough had decided that he was going to make use of this very classic military tactic, which was to take a third of his army and send them around the back of the enemy to cut them off.

And they burned their entire wagon train.

80 wagons full of all their supplies.

In a landscape like this, you cannot survive without your wagon train.

So without their food, without their animals, without any wagons, the Confederate Army could not carry on.

So their campaign for the West was over.

-Back East, the bloodiest war in American history is under way.

The country is being torn apart over the issue of slavery.

But at first, free African-Americans are barred from joining the Army and fighting for the emancipation of their people.

-From the very beginning, African-American leaders like Frederick Douglass are pushing President Abraham Lincoln to allow black men to fight.

But it's really with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 that makes the Civil War a war over slavery.

And so, with that proclamation, black military participation is also allowed.

Immediately, black men start enlisting.

-Over the course of the war, nearly 200,000 African-American men would enlist -- 10% of the Union Army.

-Perhaps the most well-known black regiment is the 54th Massachusetts.

And they are, I think, really indicative of the black military experience, because they really are so proud to serve, but they have so much racism that they face, they have a difficult time finding officers, at first, to serve, and then they kind of get sent to a battle where many of them die, where other white regiments did not want to go.

-Almost 70,000 African-American soldiers are killed or go missing in action.

These all-black regiments fight with distinction throughout the Civil War, and 24 black soldiers receive Congressional Medals of Honor for bravery.

But while the Emancipation Proclamation allows Black Americans to fight... [ Explosions ] ...it takes action to free all of the enslaved people from the Confederacy.

On June 18, 1865, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, U.S. troops arrive in Texas to finally free those who remained enslaved.

-Juneteenth is when they arrived in South Texas, the Union Army, and told the slaves that were in South Texas that they had been freed due to the Emancipation Proclamation.

Slavery is over, so it is celebrated as a day of freedom.

[ Clock ticking ] -Today in Dallas, descendants of some of those freed mark this historic day with a good old-fashioned rodeo.

♪♪ ♪♪ -There you go!

-My name is Harlan Hearn.

Today, we are having our Juneteenth rodeo.

This is the 33rd year we've held it here, associated with the African American Museum of Dallas.

-My name is Wendell Hearn.

I'm with the Cowboys of Color Rodeo, and it's the rodeo that's highlighting the African-American, Native American cowboys, and Hispanic cowboys.

And it's just keeping that legacy going.

I remember having a rope in my hand when I was 5 years old.

Rodeo is in my blood.

[ Laughs ] I was born into it.

-To us, this is our basketball, football, baseball.

This is what we love to do.

-There's a deep tradition of rodeo in the West.

Rodeo's origins is not like other sports.

Rodeo is organic.

♪♪ Rodeo comes from everyday functionings on the ranch.

They decided, you know, to get together, ranch versus ranch, test their skills.

That's the beginning of rodeo.

-The roots of this legendary sport go back to the old days, when previously enslaved people were free to seek opportunity on the Western Frontier.

-A lot of the cowboys came out of slavery.

They worked in the fields and they worked livestock in slavery.

So when they started moving cattle to the West, these guys knew what to do already.

♪♪ It didn't matter what color you were.

♪♪ ♪♪ A lot of people say they've never seen a black cowboy, they never knew.

Well, we've been there.

We've been doing it.

-The legacy is that 1-in-4 cowboys in the Old West were African-American.

Not many people know that.

It's not really covered in the history books.

So, while I'm second generation, you've got people around here that are fourth, third, fifth.

They can trace back to the great cattle ranches of mid-to-late 1800s.

[ Crowd cheering ] -There we go.

9.0.

[ Crowd cheering ] -What we're trying to do is addition by addition.

All we're saying is, "This is the history book.

What you have there is factual.

But did you know about these other facts?"

If we add those to the history book, the history book is larger and everyone has a better understanding of American history, especially during that period.

-This Juneteenth celebration is a reminder of the day where the last people got their freedom.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Black military participation is successful, I think, in showing White Americans that African-Americans are loyal, they are hardworking, like, all these things, of course, that people shouldn't have to prove.

But there are many kind of supporters that come out of the woodwork from the white men who fought alongside them, from some Democrats, and other politicians.

And so after the war, in 1866, they do agree to establish standing black regiments.

-The West was calling, and this time, free African-American men would be at the center of the wars for the West.

♪♪ -♪ Whoa, whoa, whoa ♪ -♪ Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa ♪ -♪ Whoa... ♪ -The stories of the African-American men who served on the Western Front lives on today through history enthusiasts like Barrie Tompkins, leader of the Nicodemus Troop of Buffalo Soldiers.

-♪ Whoa, whoa ♪ ♪ Whoa, whoa ♪ [ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪ -♪ Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ -♪ Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ -The more I researched, the more obsessed I got with it and found out that they did so many courageous things.

I'm like, "Why isn't this story told?

Why don't the American -- the world know about the forgotten heroes, the Buffalo Soldiers?"

-♪ Born in Alabama ♪ -♪ Hold your head and hold it high ♪ -♪ Hold your head and hold it high ♪ -♪ This, child, will pass you by ♪ -Buffalo Soldiers was established in 1866, The United States Congress said African-Americans could officially serve in the military.

They created the 9th and 10th cavalry, the 24th and the 25th Infantry.

-The United States government sets up recruiting offices across the South.

-You would make $16 a month.

Well, back then, most people didn't make $16 a month.

Well, you have all of these black men like, "Wow, we're going to do this."

-The troops are sent to help settle the West, but they are treated as second-class soldiers.

-They got the worst of everything.

They got hand-me-down clothes, they got hand-me-down horses, but they still rose to the top.

These guys -- they're some tough guys.

[ Indistinct shouting ] Becoming a Buffalo Soldier gave them a sense of freedom.

It gave them a sense of worth, because they became men.

They wasn't just a farmhand or a freed slave.

It gave them a purpose.

-Throughout this era, Buffalo Soldiers play a major role in transforming the landscape of the West.

[ Indistinct shouting ] -They were just supposed to be used for building roads, maintaining forts, and just doing labor.

They found out that these men were very courageous.

[ Horse neighs ] -When they get to the West, they really kind of serve the purpose of creating and protecting infrastructure.

And so they are protecting the people building the railroads.

They are some of the first kind of guardians of the National Park Service, putting out fires there, making sure that people aren't using the grass to graze illegally.

So the way that we think of the creation of the West, the Buffalo Soldiers are key.

-The West was a strange new world for African-Americans brought up in the East and South.

And how these troops got their name is indelibly linked with their interactions with the indigenous people.

-The Buffalo Soldiers never saw a Native American before, and a Native American never saw these soldiers, these black soldiers, before.

[ Buffalo grunts ] The Native Americans said that the Great Spirit gave them the buffalo.

It clothed them and sheltered them and fed them.

They noticed the hair on the buffalo resembled the hair on the black man.

So they called them "Buffalo Soldiers," not out of making fun of them, but out of respect for them.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Many of the Buffalo Soldiers talk about how military service is important to their conception of themselves as free men.

And so masculinity is an important part of this new identity as free people, but they also are aware that they are part of the subjugation of Native Americans, of people who they, of course, see similarities with.

They also help kind of clear the land of native people.

So they force them onto reservations and make sure that they stay there.

They are part of the Plains Wars, and also that they are helping to colonize the country that did not want them as citizens, initially.

-Buffalo Soldiers are pressed into more conflicts of contradictions as the U.S. strengthens its hold on the West in what would become known as the Plains Indian War.

-The U.S. government's central Indian policy up until the 1860s was to establish treaty-making with native peoples.

-But the treaty-making policies of old changed after the Civil War.

While the U.S. was preoccupied with infighting, Native Americans reasserted their power on the plains.

But this rise in power threatens the union.

-During the U.S.-and-Confederate fight, indigenous groups in the region were actually taking advantage of the chaos.

There were huge wagon trains of civilians and soldiers on the roads, and they were constantly getting raided by both Apache and Navajo raiders.

One of the interesting developments in the West during the Civil War is that there was a huge increase in military personnel.

This is a huge upswell in the military population, and this really changes the geopolitics of the region, because now the U.S. Army has enough mounted soldiers to really engage in some violent and destructive campaigns against indigenous peoples.

James Carleton arrived.

He had led a 2,000-man army.

And he decided that he was going to put all of that army's strength in two new campaigns -- one against the Mescalero and the Chiricahua Apaches in the southern part of New Mexico Territory, and the other against Navajos in the northern part of the territory.

Carleton was to do away with treaty-making and to just begin with warfare, to force native peoples from their homelands and onto reservations, where they could be contained and surveilled and sort of kept out of the way of white settlers.

-Sporadic warfare takes over the plains.

The U.S. builds forts to protect pioneers and settlers traveling along the busy Bozeman Trail route, but to native tribes, it is an invasion, and they fight back.

-In the 1860s and 1870s, a kind of group, a pantheon, if you will, of indigenous leaders, really came to the attention of the American press and the American government.

And there was Sitting Bull, Red Cloud in the Lakota Country.

There's Geronimo in the Southwest, in Arizona.

All of these men were really the loudest voices for resistance, and they led their people into often-successful battles against the U.S. Army under the leadership of Red Cloud and then, later, Sitting Bull.

-A leader of the Lakota, Red Cloud fights so fiercely that the U.S. agrees to abandon their forts along the Bozeman Trail.

In return, the Lakota accept a reservation.

But Sitting Bull refuses.

When the Civil War ends, the east of the country is devastated.

But now the full power of the United States Army is focused on the Western Frontier.

Full-out war on the plains is brewing.

-This is where the tide begins to turn.

This is really the beginning of a long, extended fight with the federal government.

-As soldiers and settlers descend upon the West, conflict is inevitable on the grassy plains of Montana.

♪♪ My English name is Rose Williamson.

We are here in Southeast Montana, where Custer lost his life at the Battle of the Little Bighorn to the Allied Tribes, the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho.

I'm just a person who really loves history.

I care about how this story is told.

I care about representing the people who fought in it well.

-On the Crow Nation Reservation, Little Bighorn is the site of one of the most consequential battles in the history of the West.

And every year, it is re-fought and remembered by history buffs and descendents alike.

-The warriors and soldiers came and fought here on June 25, 1876.

But what they were fighting about had to do with gold.

-Today, this is the Crow Nation, but in the 1860s, these plains are the hunting grounds between the Crow and the Great Lakota Indian reservations.

But their rightful claim to this land is upended when gold is discovered in the Black Hills.

-America just came out of the Civil War, and that made them broke.

But that gold that was discovered out in the Sioux territory -- that was like an economic stimulus package to America.

-The discovery of gold in Lakota territory leads to a gold rush, and a military expedition led by Colonel George Armstrong Custer paves the way for Americans to invade.

-Within one year's time, there was already over 15,000 people going into the Great Sioux Indian Reservation looking for their American dream.

-Looking for their American dream on land sacred to the Lakota people.

-The federal government -- first, they say they attempt peace, and they tried to buy the Black Hills from the Lakota.

But the Black Hills -- the best comparison I could give you is like selling your church.

And I know nobody today would want to do that.

And the Lakota didn't want to do that back then.

So the federal government would have an ultimatum, an edict which would state all non-agency Indians are to report to the reservation by January 31st of 1876 or be deemed hostile.

-But many tribes ignore the U.S. government's orders.

-Everybody stays where they're at.

No one goes to the reservation.

Then January 31st comes and goes, and the War Department for the United States takes over and enacts the massive military campaign, the Centennial Campaign, the 100-year anniversary of the United States.

That would involve three huge columns of soldiers to rally up the Indians and force them onto the Great Sioux Indian Reservation by any means necessary.

-The Army moves against the Lakota and Cheyenne.

Custer and his troops rampage against the Western Plains.

At Washita River, Custer attacks an encampment where women and children were taken hostage and killed.

To native people, it is known as the Washita Massacre.

But Custer had just put himself on a collision course with two giants of indigenous history... Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.

-Crazy Horse -- he was a leader for the Lakota.

With his bravery, would ride back and forth in front of the shooting soldiers and not get hit by a single bullet.

-More than a warrior, Sitting Bull is already known as a fierce leader to the U.S. government.

-Out in Washington, D.C., and the halls of Congress, Sitting Bull was demonized.

"Sitting Bull and his murderous Indian outlaws."

Out here in the hunting grounds, Sitting Bull was the most respected man amongst this whole entire camp.

If he spoke, his words were law.

-On their traditional lands, these two leaders forge an alliance to protect their people from the American Army.

-Right behind me is where the Cheyenne were camped.

The Cheyenne encountered Crazy Horse, and for protection, they stayed as one unit until they make their way here into the valley of the Little Bighorn River.

And from March till June, this camp grows from the hundreds to the thousands.

-To hunt these leaders down, Custer employs the traditional enemies of the Lakota, the Crow Indians.

They know that where there are horses, they'll find the Lakota and Cheyenne.

-And the Crow scouts look out here from the mountaintops and they look across from us on the other side of the valley, and they see the horse herd.

The population of the horse herd was between 18,000 to 20,000 head of horses.

Scouts send word to Custer that they spotted the camp.

He brings his soldiers to this side of the base of those mountains.

-Custer splits off his force of 700 cavalrymen to cut off Indian escape and drives right into the heart of the camp.

-They were suspecting they're only going to come upon a couple hundred people.

It's not a couple hundred, but it's thousands, thousands, thousands, and thousands of teepees.

And Custer blazes down that valley quickly as he can to catch the Indians, because they think the natives are running away.

But they're not.

In the camp, there was a surprise.

And instantly, the warriors started making their way towards the soldiers, trying to make sure there was enough time for the women and children to get away.

Across from us, the pony herd, the little boys -- as soon as they found out soldiers were attacking, they're driving those massive horse herds into the valley, into the camp.

And this creates a dust cloud.

And his men -- they're firing into that dust cloud, and the very ground seems to grow Indians.

Hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of warriors were coming out to fight him.

And then the warriors would charge down into the valley, expect the soldiers to counter-charge.

But as the warriors come charging into the valley towards the soldiers, they just totally stampede the soldiers, pushing them into the trees.

They were surrounded.

And that is where Custer spent the last moments of his life fighting.

-Custer and over 200 of his men are killed.

It is the most decisive victory indigenous people ever fought against Americans.

But it is the beginning of the end.

-The natives won, but they didn't win the war.

And after this battle, the United States government comes back stronger, and it's nonstop fighting for the whole year.

Battle.

Battle.

Battle.

Battle.

Battle.

Crazy Horse -- after a year of fighting, he looks at the people he loves the most in his own camp, and that's the elderly and the children.

They were the ones suffering the most.

So he would give up and take them to the reservation.

-This is one of those moments in which we like to hear the stories of indigenous victory, but they actually had a very destructive effect, which was to really bring down the hammer of federal power upon them.

Very quickly after the Battle of Little Bighorn, or Greasy Grass, as the Lakota called it, Lakota bands were dispersed, many of them surrendered, and by the early 1880s, most Lakota peoples had moved onto reservations.

-Outnumbered and outgunned, one by one, bands are forced to surrender.

Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull -- these warriors and legends are forced to suffer the indignities of reservations, where both will one day be killed.

[ Chanting, drumming ] The aftermath of Little Bighorn still reverberates today.

But not all native leaders suffered such a tragic fate.

Deep in the heart of Texas, a statesman of the age is remembered for his success in both fighting and adapting to the changing world... the last chief of the Comanche, Quanah Parker.

Renowned as some of the finest horse people on the continent, the Comanche Empire had once stretched across the Southwest, but as Americans came west, Comanche life began to change.

-Quanah Parker was born around 1845.

He grew up quickly in doing what young Comanche men did at that time -- of becoming a warrior.

I'm a professor of Native American cultural studies at the University of Oklahoma and I'm a descendant of this famed chief, Quanah Parker.

-Quanah Parker is born a man of two worlds.

-He was raised by his Comanche father, the chief Peta Nocona.

He's also raised for several years by his Anglo mother, Cynthia Ann Parker.

Cynthia Ann is captured by Comanches in 1836, at the age of 9, and was raised among Comanches.

-War and the extermination of the buffalo had become an existential threat to the Comanche and their way of life.

-For Quanah, it was this fierce warrior who would defend his people to the death, would defend his people and his homelands at any cost.

And he was part of the last band, the holdouts.

Quanah eventually realizes that he was at this crossroads, and so he finally agreed to lead his band into the reservation and went there.

-But unlike many of his contemporaries, the reservation is not the end of Quanah Parker's story.

-Instead of just withering into history, he continues and he flourishes, now being on this reservation, and he sees an economic opportunity and starts actually charging some of his white rancher friends to start grazing their cattle.

He becomes a stockholder and co-owner in the Quanah, Acme and Pacific Railroad, to where even his name, of course, is the lead name in this railroad.

-The war for the West was now over, but he remained a leader of his people.

-He becomes a judge in later years, overseeing all-Indian court system.

He went to Washington, D.C.

He became friends with President Roosevelt.

We were becoming American, and he's embracing that, but he also is making sure that we never stop being Comanche.

-In embracing the new normal... Quanah Parker bridges the gap between the old ways of the West and the new.

♪♪ ♪♪ The West was violent, volatile, and forged in war, but it was shaped by so much more.

This is a century of ambition and greed... economic engines and modern marvels.

[ Train whistle blows ] The real Wild West was a time of boom and bust.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪