1
00:00:16,207 --> 00:00:18,402
For hundreds of centuries,

2
00:00:18,607 --> 00:00:23,522
and long after men had settled
in the land masses of Europe, Asia and Africa,

3
00:00:23,407 --> 00:00:27,286
this continent was unknown to any human being.

4
00:02:07,367 --> 00:02:10,564
In swamps and valleys the size of Scotland,

5
00:02:10,727 --> 00:02:15,039
animals unknown in Europe
disturbed only each other.

6
00:02:15,527 --> 00:02:17,916
(SNARLING)

7
00:02:19,367 --> 00:02:21,676
(RATTLING)

8
00:02:29,087 --> 00:02:31,885
(EAGLE CRIES)

9
00:02:33,327 --> 00:02:38,447
Strange birds of prey
wheeled safely over an empty continent.

10
00:02:43,887 --> 00:02:48,085
At some point -
we suppose not later than 15,000 BC -

11
00:02:48,207 --> 00:02:51,199
humans drifted down from Asia and the Aleutians,

12
00:02:51,567 --> 00:02:53,956
ranged the length and breadth of the Americas,

13
00:02:53,967 --> 00:02:57,755
built and exhausted civilisations
we know nothing about.

14
00:02:57,807 --> 00:03:00,605
Today there are only a few ancient relics,

15
00:03:01,167 --> 00:03:05,558
such as this one
in a remote canyon of northern Arizona.

16
00:03:05,647 --> 00:03:08,605
There were nations that never knew each other,

17
00:03:08,767 --> 00:03:12,760
500 languages,
tribes that worshipped a bison

18
00:03:12,607 --> 00:03:15,326
or a matriarch or the corn they grew.

19
00:03:17,887 --> 00:03:20,481
There were tribes ruled by warriors.

20
00:03:27,007 --> 00:03:29,396
Or by women farmers.

21
00:03:34,967 --> 00:03:37,356
Or by sacred elders.

22
00:03:42,647 --> 00:03:45,241
Tribes that had never heard of war.

23
00:03:49,847 --> 00:03:53,237
And tribes debauched by centuries of fighting.

24
00:04:03,767 --> 00:04:06,076
(CHANTING)

25
00:04:06,647 --> 00:04:11,641
Hollywood has often restaged
the sight and sound of imaginary dances,

26
00:04:11,927 --> 00:04:17,524
but those sounds you hear
are not those of $25-a-day Indian extras.

27
00:04:17,927 --> 00:04:20,122
(CHANTING)

28
00:04:25,727 --> 00:04:30,517
These are Apaches of the 1970s,
for once in their history

29
00:04:30,447 --> 00:04:35,316
allowing us to watch all but the most
sacred moments of an annual ceremony

30
00:04:35,727 --> 00:04:40,005
in which supernatural figures
celebrate the passage of their women

31
00:04:40,047 --> 00:04:42,436
from childhood to puberty.

32
00:04:56,367 --> 00:05:00,360
So for at least 150 centuries
before Yankee Doodle,

33
00:05:00,207 --> 00:05:02,960
theirs was the American way of life.

34
00:05:03,367 --> 00:05:05,961
(FREE JAZZ)

35
00:05:07,687 --> 00:05:11,157
But, for better or worse,
this is what we've made of it

36
00:05:11,367 --> 00:05:16,122
and it is the past 400 years
that we think of as the history of the land

37
00:05:16,287 --> 00:05:18,881
that became the United States.

38
00:05:31,887 --> 00:05:34,355
I've been discovering that history

39
00:05:34,767 --> 00:05:39,079
for 40 years of reading
and travel throughout the United States,

40
00:05:39,087 --> 00:05:44,207
and for 20 of those years I've lived here
in this apartment, overlooking Central Park.

41
00:05:45,327 --> 00:05:47,921
For most of my time as a foreign correspondent,

42
00:05:48,207 --> 00:05:53,406
this has been my daily map
of the United States. I mean, literally, a map.

43
00:05:53,487 --> 00:05:57,082
I once had a secretary
who was hopeless at geography

44
00:05:57,327 --> 00:06:01,718
and to help her - and me - find the right books,
I arranged them in this order.

45
00:06:01,647 --> 00:06:06,038
Everything on New England is in the north-east
corner. You go down the coast to Florida,

46
00:06:06,447 --> 00:06:10,440
across the Deep South to California,
up to Oregon, Washington,

47
00:06:10,287 --> 00:06:13,484
and you have to have high boots to reach Alaska.

48
00:06:13,647 --> 00:06:17,845
Now, because of a continuing interest
in California history,

49
00:06:18,447 --> 00:06:22,645
California tends to go halfway across
and spill right into Texas -

50
00:06:22,767 --> 00:06:27,363
rather like
a Californian's mental map of the United States.

51
00:06:27,567 --> 00:06:32,561
Well, we all lay great stress
on our favourite states and places and people.

52
00:06:32,367 --> 00:06:34,961
Don't be upset if yours get squeezed out.

53
00:06:35,247 --> 00:06:39,638
I have a man I'm mad about over there -
Benjamin Franklin -

54
00:06:39,967 --> 00:06:42,765
and I'm not sure that even he will make it.

55
00:06:42,687 --> 00:06:46,680
You know,
when I told an old Southerner, a friend of mine,

56
00:06:47,007 --> 00:06:51,922
that I was going to try and tell my version
of American history in 13 hours,

57
00:06:52,767 --> 00:06:55,361
he said, "Better talk fast, boy."

58
00:06:56,607 --> 00:07:01,203
So we ought to begin
with the simple colossal question:

59
00:07:01,407 --> 00:07:04,205
Who was the first white man to discover America?

60
00:07:04,287 --> 00:07:09,680
Which, incidentally, was named
after a Florentine businessman and promoter

61
00:07:09,567 --> 00:07:14,561
who promoted himself so well
as to get his first name attached to a continent.

62
00:07:14,847 --> 00:07:17,441
He was Amerigo Vespucci.

63
00:07:18,687 --> 00:07:22,282
He took no part in the early voyages,
so who was first?

64
00:07:22,047 --> 00:07:27,440
There are people who are hot for the Vikings,
now we hear the Phoenicians were here first.

65
00:07:27,807 --> 00:07:32,801
No, the Jews, who presumably took one look
at New York City and beat it back to the Nile.

66
00:07:34,047 --> 00:07:39,440
The records of the earliest voyages
are either lost or highly debatable,

67
00:07:39,327 --> 00:07:45,516
but there was one historic expedition
which is documented beyond all question,

68
00:07:46,047 --> 00:07:49,483
which is why we're going into my kitchen.

69
00:07:51,567 --> 00:07:56,561
You know, some of the great explosions
of history have been caused by nothing more

70
00:07:56,847 --> 00:08:00,044
than the denial of a simple human need.

71
00:08:03,687 --> 00:08:06,679
Like a shortage of water.

72
00:08:07,047 --> 00:08:09,845
Or too many people in a small country.

73
00:08:09,927 --> 00:08:15,126
A total absence of timber, which has plagued
the Egyptians since the time of Solomon.

74
00:08:21,407 --> 00:08:24,001
Today we think of these spices -

75
00:08:24,287 --> 00:08:28,200
pepper, paprika, cinnamon, cloves -

76
00:08:28,327 --> 00:08:30,921
as no more than gilt to the lily,

77
00:08:30,727 --> 00:08:34,322
but in the 15th century they made food edible.

78
00:08:34,567 --> 00:08:39,163
They had salt, but no other way
of preserving food and, even in rich houses,

79
00:08:39,247 --> 00:08:44,241
it often came to the table putrid,
so these spices deceived the palate,

80
00:08:44,527 --> 00:08:48,236
if not the digestion -
which they sometimes still do.

81
00:08:48,647 --> 00:08:53,243
Now, in 1453,
the Turks conquered Constantinople,

82
00:08:53,447 --> 00:08:56,041
our Istanbul, and it was the gateway to Asia.

83
00:08:55,847 --> 00:09:01,046
What they'd done was shut off Europe from Asia,
which was where the spices came from.

84
00:09:01,607 --> 00:09:07,204
That is to say from here - from the Molucca
Islands between Borneo and the Philippines.

85
00:09:07,847 --> 00:09:12,637
It's astounding to me that the name, the
Moluccas, is not as famous as London or Boston

86
00:09:13,127 --> 00:09:18,679
because they were the spice islands, where
the natives grew precious products for the Turks

87
00:09:18,807 --> 00:09:21,196
and for Europe.

88
00:09:21,207 --> 00:09:25,723
How to reach them
except through Constantinople?

89
00:09:26,047 --> 00:09:30,643
There was a superb sailor,
an Italian who not only thought he knew how

90
00:09:30,847 --> 00:09:33,236
but was determined to do it himself.

91
00:09:33,247 --> 00:09:38,799
For many years a master mariner with the
Portuguese - Europe's best merchant marine -

92
00:09:39,087 --> 00:09:45,037
he had spent much time with astronomers
and mathematicians, who believed, unlike sailors,

93
00:09:44,847 --> 00:09:47,236
that the Earth was round.

94
00:09:48,687 --> 00:09:53,477
The known map of the world
was a single land mass, as flat as a pancake,

95
00:09:53,487 --> 00:09:56,081
with the unknown ocean sea around it.

96
00:09:57,327 --> 00:10:02,321
But if it was a sphere, you could obviously sail
from the western extreme to the eastern,

97
00:10:02,127 --> 00:10:07,121
to Japan, China and Indonesia,
to the Indies where the spices lay.

98
00:10:09,967 --> 00:10:12,765
So thought Cristoforo Colombo.

99
00:10:12,847 --> 00:10:17,841
This tough, passionate Christian
held visionary talks with God,

100
00:10:17,647 --> 00:10:20,639
but they did not cloud his instinct for 10%,

101
00:10:21,007 --> 00:10:26,639
which was what he demanded and got
for all the loot of the lands he might discover.

102
00:10:26,967 --> 00:10:32,166
After a 15-year trek around Europe, he found
his sponsors in the King and Queen of Spain,

103
00:10:32,247 --> 00:10:36,240
who coveted the spice trade,
needed gold for their dwindling treasury

104
00:10:36,567 --> 00:10:39,559
and shared Columbus' horror of the infidel Turk.

105
00:10:39,447 --> 00:10:43,838
So they packed him off on his mission
for gospel and for gold.

106
00:10:44,247 --> 00:10:51,005
And here in Barcelona harbour is a replica of the
ship in which Columbus sailed, the Santa Maria.

107
00:10:50,967 --> 00:10:56,758
Today it would not be acceptable as a yacht
by any self-respecting member of the jet set.

108
00:10:57,087 --> 00:11:00,079
100 tons only and 75 feet long.

109
00:11:00,207 --> 00:11:03,802
It was not, by a long shot,
one of the big ships of the time,

110
00:11:04,047 --> 00:11:07,835
but it would have to be sturdy enough
to withstand roaring storms

111
00:11:07,887 --> 00:11:13,280
and quick enough to take shelter in the shallow
channels of the imagined Atlantic islands.

112
00:11:13,167 --> 00:11:17,160
It was paved with pitch against barnacles,
had stones for ballast

113
00:11:17,687 --> 00:11:20,520
and a main mast as long as the keel.

114
00:11:20,687 --> 00:11:23,281
The other two ships were smaller still.

115
00:11:31,247 --> 00:11:34,842
Here in the stern is Columbus' cabin.

116
00:11:34,607 --> 00:11:36,802
And his bed.

117
00:11:37,007 --> 00:11:42,206
Incidentally, he was six feet,
which in those days was enormous.

118
00:11:42,287 --> 00:11:47,077
By the time he landed,
he must have been permanently bent over.

119
00:11:48,527 --> 00:11:54,124
And here he would have his charts. He'd been
in the chart business with his brother for years.

120
00:11:54,407 --> 00:11:58,161
And an odd detail, about the provisions.

121
00:11:58,087 --> 00:12:01,477
Naturally, they carried red wine,
the standard laxative,

122
00:12:01,927 --> 00:12:08,560
but 2.5 litres per man per day,
which sounds like an awful lot.

123
00:12:08,647 --> 00:12:13,596
I suppose they meant it to keep them
philosophical if the worst happened.

124
00:12:13,447 --> 00:12:18,840
There were 40 men aboard, including a surgeon
and the king's comptroller of accounts

125
00:12:19,207 --> 00:12:24,406
to keep tabs on Columbus' swindle sheet
when he started to figure the cost of the gold

126
00:12:24,487 --> 00:12:26,876
and the spices he was going to take.

127
00:12:26,887 --> 00:12:30,084
There was a converted Jew who spoke Arabic,

128
00:12:30,247 --> 00:12:34,684
which they thought was very similar to Chinese,
and so he'd be the interpreter.

129
00:12:35,047 --> 00:12:39,518
One Portuguese, another Italian
and the rest were Spaniards.

130
00:12:39,847 --> 00:12:44,557
And so,
on the evening of the 2nd of August 1492,

131
00:12:44,647 --> 00:12:50,438
the entire crew went ashore for confession,
received absolution for their sins

132
00:12:50,407 --> 00:12:55,197
and, on the morning of the 3rd,
they set sail from Palos.

133
00:13:11,127 --> 00:13:13,721
They sailed all through August and September

134
00:13:13,887 --> 00:13:16,481
and saw none of the islands they'd expected.

135
00:13:16,767 --> 00:13:21,158
The crews grew weary, then nervous,
then panicky and were close to mutiny.

136
00:13:21,567 --> 00:13:25,560
Maybe the world wasn't round.
Maybe they would fall off into space.

137
00:13:25,407 --> 00:13:28,319
The two other captains
begged Columbus to turn back.

138
00:13:28,767 --> 00:13:33,841
He had drastically miscalculated,
by about 80%, the width of the ocean sea,

139
00:13:34,047 --> 00:13:38,438
so he faked the log by reducing
the mileage they'd gone from Spain,

140
00:13:38,367 --> 00:13:44,397
and to redress this deceit, he tells us,
he prayed mightily to the Lord.

141
00:13:44,727 --> 00:13:49,517
Well, by divine intervention or luck,
on the following day, the 12th of October,

142
00:13:49,527 --> 00:13:55,124
he sighted, as he believed, the mainland of Asia,
or one of its offshore islands.

143
00:13:58,007 --> 00:14:00,805
We know it was San Salvador in the Bahamas,

144
00:14:00,887 --> 00:14:03,924
and he went on to explore Haiti and Cuba.

145
00:14:04,447 --> 00:14:09,237
Like most eager travellers,
Columbus found what he was looking for.

146
00:14:09,247 --> 00:14:11,636
He decided that Cuba was Japan.

147
00:14:11,647 --> 00:14:16,846
He was a little baffled by the absence of cities,
but there were spices and cotton

148
00:14:17,407 --> 00:14:23,004
and weird birds and coppery-coloured natives who
assured him there were mountains of gold inland,

149
00:14:22,967 --> 00:14:25,356
always farther inland.

150
00:14:25,367 --> 00:14:29,883
If this were so, the slaves
to work the gold mines were already on hand

151
00:14:30,007 --> 00:14:31,998
in these peaceable natives.

152
00:14:32,447 --> 00:14:35,166
He was almost convinced
and, like a good salesman,

153
00:14:35,367 --> 00:14:40,157
he hurried back to Spain
with what we should call display samples

154
00:14:40,167 --> 00:14:45,366
of the products he'd gathered -
exotic plants, an alligator, brilliant parrots,

155
00:14:45,607 --> 00:14:48,405
prize natives got up like show horses,

156
00:14:48,487 --> 00:14:50,876
some gold.

157
00:14:54,247 --> 00:14:57,444
Columbus' sales exhibition was a total success

158
00:14:57,727 --> 00:15:02,118
and his next fleet was 17 ships and 1,500 men.

159
00:15:02,047 --> 00:15:08,043
Sailors, soldiers, adventurers
rushed to found gold and silver mining colonies

160
00:15:08,287 --> 00:15:13,805
and there was a clutch of priests along
to sanctify the necessary slaves.

161
00:15:14,047 --> 00:15:16,766
But this time he really did find gold

162
00:15:16,927 --> 00:15:24,163
and there now began the longest, most
determined and most brutal gold rush in history.

163
00:15:25,087 --> 00:15:27,840
If the natives were sulky or hostile,

164
00:15:28,447 --> 00:15:32,838
they were terrified into submission
by two acts of magic.

165
00:15:32,767 --> 00:15:37,363
One was the firing
of monster machines called cannons.

166
00:15:37,567 --> 00:15:43,358
And the other was the appearance, and this
always worked, of living monsters called horses.

167
00:15:44,767 --> 00:15:50,160
There were many brave priests along who were
sickened by the outrages along the trail,

168
00:15:50,047 --> 00:15:55,724
and there's an unforgettable story of a native
king who was about to be burned at the stake

169
00:15:55,807 --> 00:16:00,403
and, as he felt the first fires rise
on his body, he refused baptism

170
00:16:00,607 --> 00:16:06,477
on the grounds that he might go to heaven
and meet there only Christians.

171
00:16:07,847 --> 00:16:12,637
Within 50 years of Columbus sighting
San Salvador, the Spaniards had conquered

172
00:16:12,647 --> 00:16:15,241
the whole of Central America and Peru.

173
00:16:15,527 --> 00:16:20,123
Now, the Pope had proclaimed
that everything 100 leagues west of the Azores

174
00:16:20,327 --> 00:16:22,921
belonged to Spain or her brother Portugal,

175
00:16:23,207 --> 00:16:28,201
but some nations refused to bow to this,
most dramatically the King of France.

176
00:16:28,007 --> 00:16:32,398
"We fail," he said,
"to find this clause in Adam's will."

177
00:16:35,207 --> 00:16:39,678
The first French arrivals, only 12 years
after Columbus, were Breton fishermen,

178
00:16:39,527 --> 00:16:42,121
working the cod banks off Nova Scotia,

179
00:16:42,407 --> 00:16:47,606
but they soon came on Indians eager
to barter furs for bits of metal and gunpowder,

180
00:16:47,687 --> 00:16:52,283
so they abandoned the cod,
penetrated the gulf and the river St Lawrence

181
00:16:52,647 --> 00:16:55,445
and trapped and skinned every animal in sight.

182
00:16:56,967 --> 00:16:59,561
These humble trappers were, incidentally,

183
00:16:59,447 --> 00:17:04,043
putting out the tentacles
of a French empire in the north,

184
00:17:06,647 --> 00:17:12,358
while, down in Mexico City,
Cortez, a penniless nobleman turned soldier,

185
00:17:12,767 --> 00:17:15,600
was crowning himself as a Mexican god.

186
00:17:15,847 --> 00:17:19,476
The Spaniards were now ready to investigate
their favourite myth

187
00:17:19,687 --> 00:17:23,236
that to the north lay seven cities of gold.

188
00:17:24,007 --> 00:17:30,446
So, in 1540, another soldier, Francisco Vasquez
de Coronado, marched north to find them.

189
00:17:31,847 --> 00:17:36,841
He started from Mexico with 300 men,
a horde of Indians, hundreds of horses, mules,

190
00:17:37,127 --> 00:17:40,517
cattle, sheep, goats and priests.

191
00:17:40,767 --> 00:17:45,363
They marched for two years,
going up through Arizona, New Mexico and Texas,

192
00:17:45,567 --> 00:17:50,357
wheeling north-east into the middle
of the present state of Kansas.

193
00:17:51,327 --> 00:17:55,525
To us,
their expectations seem preposterous,

194
00:17:55,847 --> 00:17:58,805
based on a whole Spanish literature which said

195
00:17:58,727 --> 00:18:02,083
North America contained volcanoes and mermaids

196
00:18:02,567 --> 00:18:07,197
and was the place where Judas
took his annual winter vacation from Hell.

197
00:18:07,847 --> 00:18:11,840
Also, the splendid golden objects
that abounded in Central America

198
00:18:12,167 --> 00:18:14,886
were said to hang in the north from trees.

199
00:18:16,007 --> 00:18:20,603
They found no cities, no gold,
much less trees to hang it on.

200
00:18:20,807 --> 00:18:24,197
Nothing but an endless lunar landscape.

201
00:18:52,487 --> 00:18:55,285
But these were the rigours of the soldier's lot.

202
00:18:55,847 --> 00:19:01,444
Their one consolation was that the native humans
at least could be conquered and hired to serve.

203
00:19:03,527 --> 00:19:07,725
But once they came
on a seemingly invincible pueblo.

204
00:19:07,847 --> 00:19:13,240
It was a mountain stronghold of hostile Indians
and it was called Acoma.

205
00:19:27,527 --> 00:19:31,918
The first white man to see it
was a scout from Coronado's expedition.

206
00:19:31,847 --> 00:19:36,045
He went back and told his commander
of a great city in the sky,

207
00:19:36,167 --> 00:19:39,239
the strongest position ever seen in the world.

208
00:19:46,247 --> 00:19:50,240
The Acoma Indians have lived here
for at least 1,000 years.

209
00:19:50,087 --> 00:19:55,081
On their sheer pathways up the rock,
countless hands have worn down cracks

210
00:19:55,367 --> 00:19:57,756
into smooth hand holes.

211
00:19:58,727 --> 00:20:04,324
On such a climb, the armour-clad soldier
was a pretty poor match for a nimble Redskin.

212
00:20:04,767 --> 00:20:08,965
Coronado surveyed it from afar
and gave it a miss.

213
00:20:09,567 --> 00:20:14,163
To this day, the elders of the Acomas,
unlike many Indian tribes,

214
00:20:14,487 --> 00:20:18,878
refuse to yield their ancient ways
or to perform for the white man.

215
00:20:18,927 --> 00:20:24,718
They forbid all strangers to enter
or see these sacred places called kiva.

216
00:20:41,647 --> 00:20:47,643
No power lines may be laid, no artificial heat
of any kind is available, even to bake bread,

217
00:20:47,887 --> 00:20:53,484
not for want of money, but because the rock
on which the city itself is built is sacred

218
00:20:53,647 --> 00:20:57,196
and may not be broken or defiled in any way.

219
00:21:04,487 --> 00:21:10,483
This old man, 30 miles away from motels,
pizza parlours and Joe's Second-Hand Car Lot,

220
00:21:10,727 --> 00:21:13,116
is adding an extra room to his house

221
00:21:13,127 --> 00:21:17,917
with no help
from the techniques of the American way of life.

222
00:21:22,727 --> 00:21:26,242
How about the young?
They look American, they talk American

223
00:21:26,087 --> 00:21:30,717
and today they are learning
that their heritage is one of betrayal.

224
00:21:31,207 --> 00:21:37,123
This may be the last generation
willing to walk the old, uncomplaining ways.

225
00:22:29,327 --> 00:22:34,037
Well, this windswept fortress,
which is at the top of the continental divide,

226
00:22:34,127 --> 00:22:38,518
remained unconquered
for 59 years after Coronado had seen it.

227
00:22:38,447 --> 00:22:43,237
And then the Spaniards mounted
a three-day-and-night assault and they took it.

228
00:22:43,727 --> 00:22:48,721
It was a feat sufficient to provoke
in a soldier poet a still-celebrated epic poem,

229
00:22:48,527 --> 00:22:51,803
and certainly the Spanish took an epic revenge.

230
00:22:52,367 --> 00:22:55,165
600 prisoners, 600 killed.

231
00:22:55,247 --> 00:22:59,638
They took the leading 70 warriors
and tossed them off the top of the cliff.

232
00:22:59,567 --> 00:23:04,357
They bound to lifetime servitude another 500,
mostly women and children.

233
00:23:04,847 --> 00:23:10,240
And with the rest of the population,
the adult males, they cut off one foot

234
00:23:10,087 --> 00:23:14,046
to discourage escape
or any further military adventures.

235
00:23:14,447 --> 00:23:19,237
Those who couldn't be wooed out of
their own religion were thrown to the dogs

236
00:23:19,247 --> 00:23:23,525
or flogged into devotion
to the carpenter of Nazareth.

237
00:23:38,247 --> 00:23:42,638
As usual, time softened
the sting of these atrocities

238
00:23:42,567 --> 00:23:48,563
and 30 years later a mild Franciscan priest,
Father Ramirez, walked to their fortress,

239
00:23:48,807 --> 00:23:54,200
barefoot and unarmed, and with
the single weapon of a crucifix converted them.

240
00:23:54,567 --> 00:23:57,206
And they built this church.

241
00:23:57,367 --> 00:24:02,157
It was not possible
to bury the dead in this solid stone,

242
00:24:02,167 --> 00:24:07,161
so for over 40 years the Indians brought up
earth in handfuls from the plains below

243
00:24:07,447 --> 00:24:10,245
to make this graveyard.

244
00:24:19,127 --> 00:24:23,837
If the desert wind
can leave mountains with the sheen of bones,

245
00:24:23,927 --> 00:24:28,239
it's not surprising that there are
hardly any traces of the Spanish marches,

246
00:24:28,727 --> 00:24:33,721
but there's an amazing one.
It is this towering bluff - El Morro.

247
00:24:34,767 --> 00:24:39,716
Indian guides led Coronado to it
when his men were fainting with thirst.

248
00:24:40,047 --> 00:24:43,039
At the foot of it was this pool of pure water,

249
00:24:42,927 --> 00:24:48,320
which is something that anywhere
in the arid west is likely to become a way station

250
00:24:48,647 --> 00:24:51,445
or a camp ground.

251
00:24:54,887 --> 00:24:59,165
It's odd that the first white men on the march
through America should have yielded

252
00:24:59,207 --> 00:25:02,643
to that curious human itch
which has afflicted tourists

253
00:25:02,567 --> 00:25:05,798
in the Greek islands,
the Grand Canyon and Disneyland -

254
00:25:06,407 --> 00:25:09,160
to write up their names on a stone.

255
00:25:09,767 --> 00:25:14,158
It's odder still that such inscriptions
should survive in a country

256
00:25:14,567 --> 00:25:18,924
which tears down a skyscraper
that is less than a quarter-century old.

257
00:25:20,127 --> 00:25:24,917
At any rate, the first man
who carved himself into immortality,

258
00:25:24,927 --> 00:25:29,159
we think probably with the point of a sword,
was this one.

259
00:25:29,247 --> 00:25:31,397
"Pasó por aquí el adelantado."

260
00:25:32,607 --> 00:25:37,078
Through here passed the governor,
Don Juan de Oñate,

261
00:25:37,407 --> 00:25:43,403
after his discovery of the Sea of the South,
April 16th, 1605.

262
00:25:43,647 --> 00:25:48,641
Now, by the Sea of the South he meant
that he'd been as far as the Gulf of California,

263
00:25:48,447 --> 00:25:53,646
and like every other Spaniard who ever saw
a body of water that was seemingly endless,

264
00:25:54,207 --> 00:25:57,404
he thought he'd found that passage to the Pacific.

265
00:25:57,567 --> 00:26:01,321
He did set up
the first Spanish government in the south-west,

266
00:26:01,447 --> 00:26:04,359
and here is his palace at Santa Fe.

267
00:26:08,647 --> 00:26:14,438
It was built ten years before the Pilgrim Fathers
landed on the New England coast.

268
00:26:15,807 --> 00:26:20,005
For the next 200 years,
these remote provinces of New Spain -

269
00:26:20,127 --> 00:26:22,721
today's Texas, Arizona, California -

270
00:26:23,007 --> 00:26:25,646
slowly developed an outpost economy

271
00:26:25,447 --> 00:26:30,441
throughout a burning landscape
half the size of Europe.

272
00:26:44,367 --> 00:26:49,395
The Spanish had introduced
the two indispensable elements of Western life -

273
00:26:49,887 --> 00:26:52,321
the horse and the cow.

274
00:26:52,967 --> 00:26:57,643
It was the horse that had first terrified
the Western Indian into submission.

275
00:26:58,167 --> 00:27:04,117
It was the horse that was to set him free and
freewheeling from Mexico to the Canadian tundra.

276
00:27:05,247 --> 00:27:10,241
And the Spanish left behind in the branding signs
and the embossing of saddles

277
00:27:10,527 --> 00:27:12,916
a whole heraldry of ranching.

278
00:27:14,927 --> 00:27:18,158
I imagine that those of us born abroad
think of a rodeo

279
00:27:18,287 --> 00:27:21,404
as a Western circus
for the public's entertainment,

280
00:27:21,647 --> 00:27:25,879
but throughout 2,000 miles,
the whole arc of the south-west,

281
00:27:25,967 --> 00:27:30,916
a rodeo - literally, a roundup -
is one of the timeless chores of ranching.

282
00:27:56,447 --> 00:28:00,565
The word "cowboy"
is directly translated from "vaquero".

283
00:28:00,927 --> 00:28:04,363
On this ranch in Arizona,
all these men speak only Spanish,

284
00:28:04,647 --> 00:28:10,005
except the ranch owner and his foreman,
known as the major-domo.

285
00:28:10,167 --> 00:28:12,761
And their equipment retains the Spanish names.

286
00:28:12,647 --> 00:28:19,883
The lariat. The chaps they wear for protection
against the desert scrub called chaparral.

287
00:28:27,527 --> 00:28:32,123
The purpose of the rodeo
was to round up once a year all the cattle

288
00:28:32,327 --> 00:28:35,922
that had run free
and multiplied on the open range,

289
00:28:36,047 --> 00:28:38,436
to distinguish one man's herd from another

290
00:28:38,927 --> 00:28:43,717
by branding the yearling calves
with the owner's initials or emblems,

291
00:28:43,647 --> 00:28:48,437
which were registered
with the governor of each province.

292
00:29:31,367 --> 00:29:34,200
By the way,
the word "cinch" comes from ranching.

293
00:29:34,127 --> 00:29:36,402
The saddle girth is called a cincha

294
00:29:36,727 --> 00:29:41,596
and when it was securely fastened
it was said to be cinched.

295
00:29:41,767 --> 00:29:45,362
I don't know who said it -
and it could have been me -

296
00:29:45,607 --> 00:29:51,000
that a civilisation is founded in a crop
and survives by a code of law.

297
00:29:51,367 --> 00:29:57,761
Well, the Spaniards introduced many of the basic
American crops - oats, wheat, barley, oranges -

298
00:29:58,247 --> 00:30:03,241
and they took the rudest indigenous cereal
of the Indian and they made it a staple

299
00:30:03,247 --> 00:30:06,159
from the Canadian border
to the tip of South America.

300
00:30:06,447 --> 00:30:09,325
That's maize, what is called corn.

301
00:30:21,327 --> 00:30:26,924
2,000 miles to the north and east, though,
a very different way of life was being developed

302
00:30:27,087 --> 00:30:29,885
by tough descendants of those Breton fishermen.

303
00:30:30,447 --> 00:30:35,237
They were exploring the waters and tracking down
the game of that yawning stretch of forest

304
00:30:35,247 --> 00:30:38,239
and tundra in le Canada.

305
00:30:48,127 --> 00:30:53,121
Furs, especially beaver,
were in fashionable demand in Europe,

306
00:30:53,167 --> 00:30:58,161
and to get them the French developed an entirely
new breed of explorers, trappers and hunters

307
00:30:58,287 --> 00:31:03,077
living rough, outdoing the Indians
at their own game, so that it was said,

308
00:31:03,327 --> 00:31:07,923
"No four-legged thing
is safe from a Frenchman."

309
00:31:10,767 --> 00:31:15,887
These French-Canadians are hunting the biggest
and most elusive of all North American deer,

310
00:31:16,367 --> 00:31:18,756
the moose.

311
00:31:20,687 --> 00:31:25,636
The man in the lead, incidentally,
once had to kill a bear that was stealing his food.

312
00:31:25,727 --> 00:31:29,925
He had no gun and stabbed it
with a knife on the end of a stick.

313
00:31:51,047 --> 00:31:53,083
(SINGLE SHOT)

314
00:32:21,247 --> 00:32:26,241
So rapacious were the hunters that they had to
track farther and farther into the interior

315
00:32:26,527 --> 00:32:29,121
in order to find enough animals to kill.

316
00:32:31,807 --> 00:32:37,165
Forsaking the familiar boats of Europe,
they adopted from the Indians the canoe,

317
00:32:37,407 --> 00:32:45,678
which was ideal for plying the wide rivers and
going through the channels of lakes and marshes.

318
00:32:48,087 --> 00:32:50,476
(SINGING IN FRENCH)

319
00:33:02,007 --> 00:33:06,797
Only the French, it was said, would have wanted
to settle a landscape of giant lily pads.

320
00:33:06,807 --> 00:33:12,006
Certainly only they, and later the Scots,
would knot a lifeline across a continent of tundra.

321
00:33:16,407 --> 00:33:21,197
One of the epic French journeys of exploration
began in November 1678,

322
00:33:21,687 --> 00:33:27,603
when a young nobleman, René Cavelier Sieur
de La Salle, set sail across Lake Ontario.

323
00:33:27,447 --> 00:33:32,043
He was seeking a way south
across the continent by water.

324
00:33:35,127 --> 00:33:38,005
His boat was wrecked, and in mid-winter

325
00:33:38,007 --> 00:33:42,046
his expedition had to drag its equipment
around Niagara Falls.

326
00:33:42,327 --> 00:33:43,806
Despite many disasters,

327
00:33:44,167 --> 00:33:48,957
and to the wonderment of the Seneca Indians,
they managed in the spring of 1679

328
00:33:48,967 --> 00:33:53,961
to build another boat, and launched it
on Lake Erie, where no ship had ever sailed.

329
00:33:55,687 --> 00:34:00,477
In it, La Salle sailed across the Great Lakes,
over Lake Erie, up the St Claire,

330
00:34:00,967 --> 00:34:03,356
up Lake Huron, westward into Lake Michigan.

331
00:34:03,367 --> 00:34:08,157
Battling hunger and appalling weather,
they reached the Illinois River.

332
00:34:09,127 --> 00:34:13,120
The boat sank.
They met and had to fight hostile Indians

333
00:34:13,407 --> 00:34:16,956
and La Salle was plagued
with debts and doubters back at home.

334
00:34:17,247 --> 00:34:21,240
In the winter,
they had to drag their supplies overland,

335
00:34:21,207 --> 00:34:26,486
the going so bad that they wore out
a pair of leather moccasins every day.

336
00:34:27,007 --> 00:34:31,398
But eventually they reached open water
on a branch of the Illinois River.

337
00:34:31,327 --> 00:34:35,320
On the 6th of February, 1682,
they floated into the Mississippi

338
00:34:35,647 --> 00:34:41,756
and 1,500 miles down the great river until,
after two months, they reached the open sea.

339
00:34:45,327 --> 00:34:50,560
On the 9th of April, La Salle assembled his men,
raised a cross and the banner of France

340
00:34:50,607 --> 00:34:55,397
and in the name of Louis XIV he took possession
of all the vast lands he had covered

341
00:34:55,407 --> 00:34:57,796
and called them Louisiana.

342
00:35:00,447 --> 00:35:02,836
La Salle was killed on a later expedition,

343
00:35:02,847 --> 00:35:06,840
but the French built the port of New Orleans
at the mouth of the Mississippi,

344
00:35:07,167 --> 00:35:12,161
yet they never domesticated the enormous
hinterland La Salle had brought them.

345
00:35:16,927 --> 00:35:20,886
Here is a French map
of the mid-18th century, 1755,

346
00:35:20,767 --> 00:35:25,363
which shows what an exclusive hold
the French had in the north,

347
00:35:25,567 --> 00:35:31,278
what an accurate picture
of what you might call "Lateral America".

348
00:35:31,687 --> 00:35:36,283
But the French were just as vague
about what lay to the south and west

349
00:35:36,487 --> 00:35:40,844
as the Spanish had been
about what lay to their north and west.

350
00:35:40,967 --> 00:35:43,356
Being fishermen and trappers,

351
00:35:43,367 --> 00:35:47,758
the French did a fine job of mapping
this entire nervous system of the rivers,

352
00:35:48,167 --> 00:35:55,118
but beyond them they simply put in the names
of Indian tribes - Miamis, Illinois, Sioux.

353
00:35:55,207 --> 00:35:59,200
Down here in what is now the United States,
they did not plan colonies.

354
00:35:59,047 --> 00:36:04,041
They settled, always close to the river,
way stations or what we might call retail centres

355
00:36:04,327 --> 00:36:10,118
for the downriver traffic,
bearing fur and hides and timber

356
00:36:10,567 --> 00:36:12,956
down to the port of New Orleans.

357
00:36:12,967 --> 00:36:17,961
But if they found some local useful product -
a mineral, salt -

358
00:36:18,247 --> 00:36:23,002
then they would stop and make a town,
and we're in one now,

359
00:36:23,127 --> 00:36:25,721
at St Genevieve, Missouri, on the Mississippi,

360
00:36:25,527 --> 00:36:30,078
one of the last to retain
the flavour and look of provincial France.

361
00:36:30,367 --> 00:36:33,757
We're in the house
of a French-Canadian-born merchant.

362
00:36:34,207 --> 00:36:36,596
This is the desk where he did his accounts.

363
00:36:36,607 --> 00:36:40,998
Here are the steps going up to the bedroom,
also used for winter storage.

364
00:36:40,927 --> 00:36:47,162
I think this is the most characteristic French
house now remaining in the Mississippi valley.

365
00:36:52,007 --> 00:36:55,636
What the French found here was lead.

366
00:36:56,127 --> 00:36:58,925
Veins of lead of incredible richness.

367
00:36:59,007 --> 00:37:02,522
So they brought in 200 French miners

368
00:37:02,367 --> 00:37:06,360
and imported 500 Negro slaves
from Santo Domingo

369
00:37:06,687 --> 00:37:12,478
and they carried the lead for shipping down
the Mississippi across the flatlands to the south,

370
00:37:12,447 --> 00:37:15,883
which they called "le grand champ" -
the big field.

371
00:37:16,407 --> 00:37:20,639
The French usually started with a fort
and a few soldiers,

372
00:37:20,807 --> 00:37:24,800
but they found this straggling village indefensible

373
00:37:24,647 --> 00:37:29,038
so they palisaded the houses
and it was every man for himself.

374
00:37:29,527 --> 00:37:35,045
However, they prospered and made a country
town and brought over missionaries and priests,

375
00:37:35,287 --> 00:37:37,881
planted their familiar vines and shrubs,

376
00:37:37,687 --> 00:37:42,886
in fact, imported their culture,
including a useful strain of thrift.

377
00:37:42,967 --> 00:37:48,360
The first man who owned this house prospered
exceedingly. A man named Louis Bolduc.

378
00:37:48,727 --> 00:37:52,720
And he kept his money
stored in the cellars there.

379
00:37:53,047 --> 00:37:58,041
One time, an American merchant came through
and they took a bet as to who was the wealthier.

380
00:37:57,847 --> 00:38:00,236
When Bolduc sent for a servant

381
00:38:00,727 --> 00:38:06,916
and ordered up a half-bushel basket
to measure his silver, the American paid up.

382
00:38:06,967 --> 00:38:10,960
Now, this place, St Genevieve,
in the late 18th century

383
00:38:11,207 --> 00:38:13,675
was a little Paris for the Mississippi valley,

384
00:38:13,927 --> 00:38:18,523
and parents with aspirations to gentility
sent their children here

385
00:38:18,607 --> 00:38:22,646
to learn to be good Catholics,
to learn to speak good French.

386
00:38:22,887 --> 00:38:27,324
One boy, who came all the way from Pittsburgh,
remembered very vividly

387
00:38:27,487 --> 00:38:31,480
that he had, after Sunday Mass,
attended a school of manners

388
00:38:31,327 --> 00:38:36,117
where, he said, "we learned
the two elements of true politeness -

389
00:38:36,607 --> 00:38:39,405
"grace and self-denial."

390
00:38:39,567 --> 00:38:42,161
(DRUMMING AT A BRISK TEMPO)

391
00:38:52,727 --> 00:38:58,040
On the whole, the French Catholic influence
was instructive and benign.

392
00:38:59,367 --> 00:39:02,165
It was rarely so in the Spanish south-west.

393
00:39:03,207 --> 00:39:05,801
(CHURCH BELL CHIMES)

394
00:39:13,767 --> 00:39:17,965
The conquistadors had been sent
as the sword of the Pope,

395
00:39:18,087 --> 00:39:22,683
and today in southern Arizona
the Papago Indians go off to worship

396
00:39:22,887 --> 00:39:26,675
in one of the great imperial monuments
left by the Spanish,

397
00:39:27,207 --> 00:39:29,596
the Church of San Xavier del Bac,

398
00:39:29,527 --> 00:39:33,839
where primitive Indians practised
the most sophisticated rituals of Europe.

399
00:39:48,447 --> 00:39:51,439
The chief of the Papagos.

400
00:40:01,967 --> 00:40:04,561
(CHOIR SINGS)

401
00:40:29,807 --> 00:40:35,598
After four centuries, both old and young
are as unquestioningly devout

402
00:40:36,047 --> 00:40:41,280
as the soldiers who had beaten their ancestors
into a new, bizarre religion.

403
00:41:07,127 --> 00:41:09,721
(SOMBRE SINGING IN SPANISH)

404
00:41:51,207 --> 00:41:54,244
Neither the plundering life of the conquistadors

405
00:41:54,367 --> 00:41:57,996
nor the vigorous life of the rancheros
went on for ever.

406
00:41:58,167 --> 00:42:02,524
As time went on,
so did the mellowing of the Spanish heritage

407
00:42:02,487 --> 00:42:04,876
until, by the beginning of the 19th century,

408
00:42:05,367 --> 00:42:10,760
the Spanish were thoroughly domesticated
in this part of the world, especially in California.

409
00:42:10,647 --> 00:42:16,324
By now, the Indians had been trained
to be carpenters and farmers

410
00:42:16,407 --> 00:42:19,205
and blacksmiths and growers of vines.

411
00:42:19,287 --> 00:42:24,281
And comfortable families, not much interested
in money, raised enough cattle

412
00:42:24,567 --> 00:42:27,604
and enough crops for their needs,

413
00:42:28,007 --> 00:42:33,001
practised a strict but affectionate
Catholic discipline on their children

414
00:42:33,167 --> 00:42:36,125
and lived, in squares like these,

415
00:42:36,287 --> 00:42:40,883
lives that were balanced
and useful and benevolent.

416
00:42:52,247 --> 00:42:57,037
The Spaniards' imperial ambitions
were checkmated too soon for them to build,

417
00:42:57,047 --> 00:43:02,758
as the French did here in New Orleans,
a full-blown capital city.

418
00:43:02,807 --> 00:43:08,200
This might have been the capital of the United
States if Napoleon had not sold for cash

419
00:43:08,607 --> 00:43:12,202
the huge interior
which La Salle had claimed as Louisiana.

420
00:43:12,447 --> 00:43:17,840
But the French and Spanish prospered here -
lawyers, bankers, ambassadors and playboys -

421
00:43:17,767 --> 00:43:22,761
maintaining their mistresses in terraced
apartments overlooking the main square.

422
00:43:44,087 --> 00:43:50,276
Today New Orleans more or less incorporates
as a tourist package the French heritage,

423
00:43:50,447 --> 00:43:55,237
and it is practically an obligation
to abjure the hot dog for the snail.

424
00:44:13,407 --> 00:44:16,160
Holidaymakers troop through curio shops

425
00:44:16,287 --> 00:44:20,075
which were once the homes
of diplomats and opera singers.

426
00:44:26,647 --> 00:44:31,198
But you won't find here reminders
of the French figures who created this city

427
00:44:31,447 --> 00:44:33,756
and the cities of the Mississippi valley.

428
00:44:34,127 --> 00:44:36,163
They're not much known to Americans.

429
00:44:36,047 --> 00:44:40,723
We hardly know that we pronounce Arkansas
"Arkan-saw" and Chicago "Shicago"

430
00:44:40,967 --> 00:44:43,561
because that's the way the French said them.

431
00:44:43,847 --> 00:44:47,840
We look to the north for the French contribution
and think of Canada.

432
00:44:47,687 --> 00:44:51,680
And Canadian history
is little taught in American schools.

433
00:44:52,007 --> 00:44:55,397
Consider their heroes -
Pontiac, the Ottawa chieftain,

434
00:44:55,847 --> 00:44:59,317
Cadillac, the settler of Detroit,
La Salle himself.

435
00:44:59,407 --> 00:45:02,205
They are recognised only as automobile names.

436
00:45:02,287 --> 00:45:07,077
But in these quiet patios
I am reminded of one grand exception,

437
00:45:07,087 --> 00:45:09,647
the only French god in the American pantheon.

438
00:45:11,487 --> 00:45:13,876
In the unlikely event

439
00:45:13,887 --> 00:45:18,881
that 200 million Americans
were ever put up against a wall,

440
00:45:19,167 --> 00:45:21,362
at gunpoint,

441
00:45:21,567 --> 00:45:26,766
and ordered to name one Frenchman
who had meant most to America,

442
00:45:26,847 --> 00:45:30,840
I think the name would be
the Marquis de Lafayette.

443
00:45:31,167 --> 00:45:34,364
A young French nobleman, 19, newly married,

444
00:45:34,527 --> 00:45:39,317
forbidden to leave France for the War
of Independence, he escaped to America.

445
00:45:39,327 --> 00:45:45,004
"My heart," he said, "enlisted in the cause of
liberty." George Washington was moved by him.

446
00:45:45,327 --> 00:45:49,957
He was made a major general, was wounded,
fought at Yorktown

447
00:45:50,127 --> 00:45:53,756
and was given
the freedom of a grateful republic.

448
00:45:53,927 --> 00:45:56,919
He went home to fight in the French Revolution

449
00:45:56,807 --> 00:46:01,039
for what he believed
was a similar brave cause.

450
00:46:01,487 --> 00:46:05,241
He was too liberal for Royalists,
too moderate for Republicans

451
00:46:05,407 --> 00:46:07,398
and he was thrown into a dungeon.

452
00:46:07,527 --> 00:46:11,076
His wife asked to join him there
and she was allowed to

453
00:46:11,367 --> 00:46:16,919
and they stayed five years,
which broke her in spirit and in body.

454
00:46:17,007 --> 00:46:22,365
They came to be buried together in a small
graveyard in Paris and, in time, by their side,

455
00:46:22,287 --> 00:46:26,246
lay their only son, George Washington Lafayette.

456
00:46:28,527 --> 00:46:33,806
No country has been luckier than France
in having in the person of one man

457
00:46:33,807 --> 00:46:37,402
such a permanent investment
in American goodwill.

458
00:46:37,647 --> 00:46:43,040
When General Pershing arrived in Europe with
the vanguard of the American Expeditionary Force

459
00:46:43,407 --> 00:46:49,198
in 1917, and first set foot on French soil,
he greeted the French host commander

460
00:46:49,167 --> 00:46:54,446
with the short sentence,
"Lafayette, nous voici."

461
00:46:54,927 --> 00:46:57,316
"Lafayette, we are here."

462
00:46:58,287 --> 00:47:04,362
Since we know which of the big three - the
Spanish, the French, the British - won America,

463
00:47:04,527 --> 00:47:10,397
it seemed to me only sporting
to pay an introductory tribute

464
00:47:10,287 --> 00:47:15,680
to the losers who left such a large
and indelible mark on this country.

465
00:47:16,047 --> 00:47:18,436
And it may be some consolation

466
00:47:18,447 --> 00:47:22,645
to those who believe
that the meek or the crafty inherit the earth

467
00:47:22,767 --> 00:47:27,158
to reflect
that this continent was ultimately won

468
00:47:27,567 --> 00:47:31,355
not by a race
of military conquerors like the Spanish,

469
00:47:31,407 --> 00:47:35,798
nor even by a nation of hunters,
explorers, missionaries like the French,

470
00:47:36,207 --> 00:47:42,396
but by a small handful of people
from a small island in the North Atlantic

471
00:47:42,447 --> 00:47:46,645
who first sailed in three ships
into Jamestown, Virginia,

472
00:47:47,727 --> 00:47:50,195
to find a home from home.