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I don't think anybody needs to be told
that we're in the American West.
2
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We happen to be high up
in a windy mountain valley,
3
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8,500 feet up in the Sierra Nevada,
4
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among the ghostly remains of an old mining town
that struck it rich in 1876.
5
00:01:04,567 --> 00:01:09,322
We could be in any number of places
between the Rockies and the Pacific
6
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because the West is not only a place,
it's a state of mind.
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The idea of El Dorado,
of getting away from it all,
8
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of leading the new life under the big sky.
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90 years ago, this place
was roaring with life... and death.
10
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One killing a day, 56 saloons
and gambling joints, 12,000 people here,
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all brimming with sap and mischief and vice.
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And today it's as forgotten and forlorn
as the plains of Troy.
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(MUSIC: MY DARLING CLEMENTINE)
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People often ask, "Where did the West begin?"
15
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It all depends which century you're talking in.
16
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200 years ago, the West began
2,500 miles back east,
17
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wherever the first pioneers were moving
along the ridges of the Appalachians.
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This was the first frontier.
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# 0n Jordan's stormy bank I stand
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# And cast a wishful eye
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# To Canaan's fair and lovely land
22
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# Where my possessions lie
23
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# I am bound for the Promised Land
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# I'm bound for the Promised Land
25
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# 0h, who will come and go with me?
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# I am bound for the Promised Land #
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These mountains and gorges,
only half an hour's flight from Washington DC,
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were unfamiliar to the white man
two centuries ago.
29
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This was Indian country,
so pathfinders didn't advertise their routes
30
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and made their base camps in caves.
31
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Believe it or not, this is one.
32
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No modern conveniences.
33
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This was discovered only a dozen years ago
34
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and there is strong proof that it was built
as a hut inside this huge rock shelter
35
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by D Boone, Daniel Boone, the most celebrated
of the early surveyors and pathfinders.
36
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You might say that he was the first Westerner,
37
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resting in some such place as this
and then going out by day into the mountains
38
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and living the essentially stealthy
and self-sufficient life,
39
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hunting, trapping, surveying, killing,
40
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camping, resting again
and then moving on on tiptoe.
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He disappeared for up to two years at a stretch.
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Some men, whole companies,
disappeared altogether.
43
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No wonder the phrase "gone west"
very early on became a synonym for death,
44
00:04:05,047 --> 00:04:09,837
a meaning that it retained in Europe
throughout the First World War.
45
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I don't think I could stay in here for two nights.
46
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And I think possibly the most remarkable thing
about this remarkable man
47
00:04:19,447 --> 00:04:22,644
was that he survived into his 90th year.
48
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In 1750 an English doctor found a gap
through this mountain range
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and named it after the Duke of Cumberland.
50
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It is the southern high road into the interior.
51
00:04:45,327 --> 00:04:48,046
The early pathfinder needed four essentials:
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Health, an axe, a rifle and salt -
it cured your food. It was THE preservative.
53
00:04:54,447 --> 00:04:58,838
Daniel Boone, by the way,
must have had divining rods in his nostrils.
54
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It was said he could sniff salt at 30 miles.
55
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Now, you could get it from a creek
56
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or, better, from the standing water
of a brine lake.
57
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The pioneers smelt it out here, which is,
appropriately, in Boone County, Kentucky,
58
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but they were not the first.
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Two million years ago
you'd have heard a noise here like an earthquake.
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Dinosaurs, mastodons, sloths
came galumphing in here, attracted by the salt.
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In the 1770s, a Virginian named James Douglas
came surveying through here
62
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and he looked out on the whole valley
as a graveyard of gigantic bones.
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Teeth weighing ten pounds each,
thigh bones, five feet, eleven-foot tusks.
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And in the evening he camped.
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They made tent poles of mastodon ribs and
sat down to supper with vertebrae as chairs.
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The fame of this spread all over.
67
00:06:01,847 --> 00:06:07,046
Expeditions came hustling in, the Royal College
of Surgeons in London collared quite a pile -
68
00:06:07,127 --> 00:06:09,516
unfortunately destroyed in the Blitz -
69
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but today there are some
at the Museum of Natural History in Kensington.
70
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Here, in their natural place,
they're very rare. This is a tooth.
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00:06:18,927 --> 00:06:23,205
I should hope a molar,
about as big as Yorick's skull.
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It was enough for the early pioneers
at the turn of the 19th century
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that they could take 1,000 gallons
of the salt water from this vast brine lake,
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which used to be here,
and boil it down to 20 pounds of salt.
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This meant there was no further compulsion
to push on, and some of them simply settled in.
76
00:06:59,327 --> 00:07:04,321
It was in such clearings that the original
frontiersmen first hunted for their food,
77
00:07:04,127 --> 00:07:06,516
planted crops, made a home.
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00:07:07,007 --> 00:07:11,797
Mostly of English-Scotch-Irish stock
with names like Jackson, Marshall, Lincoln,
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rude folk starting life like African tribes,
80
00:07:15,167 --> 00:07:19,683
only a couple of hundred miles or more
from the merchants of New York,
81
00:07:20,167 --> 00:07:23,284
from the elegance of Williamsburg.
82
00:07:30,807 --> 00:07:35,756
Those with the get up and go to come through
the mountains and make homes like these
83
00:07:36,087 --> 00:07:40,877
were the democrats
who would live out and transform
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00:07:40,887 --> 00:07:47,281
the neat, noble system of government written
by the lawyers and landowners in Philadelphia.
85
00:07:52,887 --> 00:07:57,677
Those who pushed farther inland
came on a race of amphibious pioneers,
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00:07:57,527 --> 00:08:02,726
Frenchmen mainly, who travelled cheerfully
up and down the American interior.
87
00:08:02,847 --> 00:08:07,841
The many great rivers running north and south
sustained not only life and limb
88
00:08:08,127 --> 00:08:12,325
but a flourishing trade
between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico
89
00:08:12,767 --> 00:08:17,761
in furs, skins, turpentine,
tar, lead, grains, rum and whisky.
90
00:08:20,087 --> 00:08:23,875
All the traffic was down these rivers
that flow into this basin.
91
00:08:23,927 --> 00:08:26,521
The Missouri, Illinois, Wabash, Ohio.
92
00:08:26,807 --> 00:08:32,006
All coming down into the great current of
the Mississippi to Louisiana and New Orleans.
93
00:08:33,047 --> 00:08:35,641
We should understand that, in 1803,
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00:08:35,927 --> 00:08:40,523
Louisiana was not the compact state
in the Deep South that we know today
95
00:08:40,727 --> 00:08:47,326
and that we associate with petroleum
and sugar cane and sweet potato and gumbo
96
00:08:47,447 --> 00:08:50,837
and the origins of Dixieland jazz. Watch.
97
00:08:51,087 --> 00:08:53,396
Here's today's Louisiana,
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00:08:53,487 --> 00:08:59,483
but in 1803 Louisiana embraced
the whole watershed west of the Mississippi,
99
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comprising the present-day states of Louisiana,
Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma,
100
00:09:05,487 --> 00:09:11,881
both Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota,
Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana.
101
00:09:12,207 --> 00:09:17,156
Look at it. One third of a nation,
all the way up to Canada.
102
00:09:18,327 --> 00:09:20,716
Nobody ruled these vast lands.
103
00:09:20,727 --> 00:09:26,518
There were a few trading posts, a few garrisons,
but only 1% of whites had settled it
104
00:09:26,487 --> 00:09:30,480
and even the most sophisticated of them
had only the most romantic notions
105
00:09:30,807 --> 00:09:34,197
of how it looked and what was there.
106
00:09:34,487 --> 00:09:39,322
In 1801,
this huge land mass was owned by Spain,
107
00:09:39,527 --> 00:09:44,317
but in that year she was forced
to yield it to Napoleon in a secret treaty.
108
00:09:44,327 --> 00:09:49,196
At the same time, he had despatched
to the West Indies a French expeditionary force
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00:09:49,607 --> 00:09:53,805
to suppress a native revolt,
but there was more to it than that.
110
00:09:53,927 --> 00:09:58,318
When Thomas Jefferson heard that French ships
had arrived in Santo Domingo,
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00:09:58,247 --> 00:10:03,526
he was the first to suspect that this was
a mere rehearsal for the subsequent planting
112
00:10:03,847 --> 00:10:08,125
of a French empire
in Louisiana and the United States.
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00:10:08,287 --> 00:10:12,883
In Santo Domingo,
the flower of the French infantry had wilted,
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00:10:13,087 --> 00:10:17,877
enervated by heat and malaria,
baffled by natives on their own terrain.
115
00:10:17,807 --> 00:10:22,403
And they were led by a black general,
Toussaint L'Ouverture,
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00:10:22,527 --> 00:10:28,204
a master of guerrilla warfare,
a furtive military type,
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quite beyond the talent of the portrait painters
of the day to represent.
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The upshot was that Napoleon lost
24,000 of his finest soldiers.
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Santo Domingo was, in fact, his Vietnam.
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He withdrew and decided against
any other adventures 3,000 miles from home.
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So he sold Louisiana freehold
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and the territorial transfer was signed right
here in this room in the Cabildo in New Orleans.
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And...
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it was all kept so secret
that only 20 days elapsed
125
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between the knowledge that Louisiana
had passed from Spain to France
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and then that the Americans had bought it.
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The very day the people gathered in the square
outside here to celebrate the fact
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that they were becoming Frenchmen,
they were suddenly Americans,
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a confusion of what today, I suppose, we'd call
identity that seems to cause no pain at all.
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00:11:56,447 --> 00:12:02,795
I think this bust in the Cabildo ought to be
inscribed, "Thomas Jefferson chuckled here,"
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00:12:02,687 --> 00:12:07,044
because a president can only
conclude a treaty with a foreign nation
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with the consent of the Senate.
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Jefferson advised and consented with nobody.
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He didn't mention a word until it was finished
and his comment on why he kept it secret
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00:12:18,527 --> 00:12:22,315
is a wonderfully bare-faced bit of gall,
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00:12:22,847 --> 00:12:27,238
worthy of Franklin Roosevelt at his blandest.
Listen to this.
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"This treaty must, of course,
be laid before both Houses.
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00:12:31,967 --> 00:12:36,961
"Both, I presume, will see their duty
to their country in ratifying and paying for it.
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00:12:37,247 --> 00:12:41,843
"The Executive, I grant,
has done an act beyond the Constitution,
140
00:12:42,047 --> 00:12:46,837
"but it is the case of a guardian
investing the money of his ward
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"in purchasing an important adjacent territory
and saying to him, when of age,
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"'I did this for your good."'
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00:12:55,487 --> 00:12:58,957
Of course, it was unconstitutional.
It was outrageous.
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00:12:59,327 --> 00:13:02,637
But in the end
even Jefferson's enemies accepted it
145
00:13:02,687 --> 00:13:07,681
for the most reliable
of American reasons - it worked.
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00:13:07,847 --> 00:13:12,238
Clinching the smoothest deal
in the history of real estate,
147
00:13:12,167 --> 00:13:17,844
Jefferson doubled the territory of the United
States for the price of a Miami Beach hotel -
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$16 million, or four cents an acre.
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00:13:25,127 --> 00:13:28,722
Jefferson decided at once
to measure and survey it
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00:13:28,967 --> 00:13:32,357
with a military expedition
led by his secretary Meriwether Lewis
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00:13:32,327 --> 00:13:34,921
and an old soldier buddy of his, William Clark.
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Like Cortez, they picked up an Indian girl,
a 16-year-old Shoshone named Sacajawea,
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who, with her French-Canadian husband,
would be guide, interpreter and go-between.
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In the one really threatening encounter
with the Indians,
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she got between Lewis and the menacing chief,
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who, astoundingly, turned out to be her brother.
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00:13:59,927 --> 00:14:03,920
Jefferson's orders were, as always,
crisp and all-embracing.
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00:14:03,767 --> 00:14:07,476
They were to open up a river route
for a continental fur trade,
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00:14:07,887 --> 00:14:11,596
to study Indian tribes,
their languages and customs,
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00:14:11,767 --> 00:14:13,758
to be nice to them on all occasions,
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00:14:13,687 --> 00:14:20,206
but convey the message that they now belonged
to the Great White Father back in Washington.
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The expedition was blithely required
to do for the whole unseen continent
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00:14:25,207 --> 00:14:29,519
what Jefferson had done
for his familiar Virginia - to list and describe
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00:14:29,887 --> 00:14:34,165
all the birds, trees, plants,
fish, weather systems, geology,
165
00:14:34,327 --> 00:14:38,081
to sketch the characteristic profile
of every native they came across.
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This pinhead is a member of the Flathead tribe.
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After mapping all the interior river systems,
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they were to march over the single range -
as Jefferson imagined - of the Rocky Mountains.
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As a clincher, they were to get
to the headwaters of the Columbia River,
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claim the whole continent for the United States
and so float sweetly in triumph to the Pacific.
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00:15:38,927 --> 00:15:42,522
When they saw it,
after nearly two exhausting years,
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00:15:42,767 --> 00:15:47,158
it was as if the first two men
had landed on the Moon.
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00:15:55,967 --> 00:16:00,961
Lewis and Clark died young enough not to doubt
the blessing they bestowed on their countrymen,
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00:16:01,247 --> 00:16:03,636
but the Indian girl lived to be 90.
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00:16:05,087 --> 00:16:07,806
She must have been an embittered old lady,
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00:16:07,967 --> 00:16:12,757
for the great expedition doomed the right
of her people to keep their native land.
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00:16:13,087 --> 00:16:18,081
The decisive blow fell a quarter-century later
on the peaceful tribes of the Deep South.
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00:16:18,047 --> 00:16:23,644
The Chickasaws, the Choctaws, the Creeks, the
Cherokees. They were forcibly dispossessed.
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00:16:26,247 --> 00:16:29,762
Now, clearly, there were
many, many forces and attitudes
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00:16:29,607 --> 00:16:34,806
to explain why the banishment of the Indian
from his own lands was inevitable,
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00:16:35,367 --> 00:16:40,566
but this was one - a very powerful force,
though a harmless looking thing. Cotton.
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00:16:40,647 --> 00:16:43,241
Young cotton, three weeks away from full bloom.
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00:16:44,367 --> 00:16:49,157
When the southern pioneers broke through
the mountains and came into these flatlands
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00:16:49,167 --> 00:16:51,203
and the Mississippi Delta beyond,
185
00:16:51,567 --> 00:16:54,764
they saw
what they wanted their West to look like.
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00:16:54,927 --> 00:16:59,523
An empire of cotton,
not a camp ground for Indian tribes.
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00:16:59,727 --> 00:17:03,720
So the great cotton states -
Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia -
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00:17:03,567 --> 00:17:09,164
they outlawed the tribal kingdoms and in 1830
Andrew Jackson, who was then president,
189
00:17:09,207 --> 00:17:13,997
pushed a bill through Congress
ordering that all the Indian tribes,
190
00:17:14,487 --> 00:17:18,400
whatever, farmers, hunters,
whether they were hostile, peaceable,
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00:17:18,567 --> 00:17:23,766
be removed west
to the west of the Mississippi.
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00:17:24,807 --> 00:17:29,403
Well, they started to pad away.
The Choctaws, the Creeks, the Chickasaws.
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00:17:29,607 --> 00:17:33,600
There was a brave pause when the Cherokee
appealed to the Supreme Court.
194
00:17:33,447 --> 00:17:36,245
Chief Justice Marshall ruled they were right.
195
00:17:36,807 --> 00:17:42,404
There was no constitutional right
to remove them from their ancestral lands.
196
00:17:42,567 --> 00:17:48,358
President Jackson said this decision is,
and I quote, "too preposterous".
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00:17:48,807 --> 00:17:54,598
And in one of the most shameless
and arbitrary acts of an American president
198
00:17:54,567 --> 00:18:00,085
he simply ignored the Supreme Court
and he said to the army, "Get them out."
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00:18:00,407 --> 00:18:05,401
And so began what is poetically
and truly called the Trail of Tears.
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00:18:05,687 --> 00:18:11,080
30,000 Cherokee were persuaded,
chained, gently led,
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00:18:10,967 --> 00:18:14,562
viciously driven,
hunted as far west as Oklahoma.
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00:18:14,887 --> 00:18:18,163
And along the way a quarter of them died.
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00:18:35,847 --> 00:18:40,841
This imperious order came to apply as far west
as the white man cared to explore.
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00:18:40,647 --> 00:18:45,641
It was meant to confine the remaining Indians
to the Siberia of the far west,
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00:18:45,927 --> 00:18:49,920
but out there were tougher tribes
who escaped confinement
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00:18:50,007 --> 00:18:52,396
by their blessed possession of the horse.
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00:18:52,887 --> 00:18:57,677
Their mobility, a heritage from the Spanish,
helped them to hunt for food
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00:18:57,727 --> 00:19:00,321
and go on warring among themselves.
209
00:19:00,287 --> 00:19:05,077
Until the day, 50 years later,
when the white man would subdue them all,
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00:19:05,527 --> 00:19:09,918
they maintained their freedom
and their defiance.
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00:19:10,087 --> 00:19:15,878
In the meantime, the far west was still an
exploitable wilderness for any white land pirate
212
00:19:15,847 --> 00:19:18,441
who had the stamina to knock around it.
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00:19:18,727 --> 00:19:23,323
The most footloose of these freebooters
roved and ambled across the plains
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00:19:23,447 --> 00:19:26,041
right into the Rockies.
215
00:19:27,287 --> 00:19:31,917
Now, why should these men come
hacking and tracking 2,000 miles or more
216
00:19:31,807 --> 00:19:33,445
to the Rocky Mountains?
217
00:19:33,727 --> 00:19:37,117
Maybe they'd heard of Lewis and Clark
and knew it was up for grabs,
218
00:19:37,087 --> 00:19:39,681
but they were not, shall we say, idealists.
219
00:19:39,967 --> 00:19:45,439
They didn't say, "Yes, sir, Mr Jefferson,
we'll conquer it for Jeffersonian democracy."
220
00:19:45,727 --> 00:19:48,321
They came here for a very practical reason.
221
00:19:48,607 --> 00:19:50,996
They came here for an animal.
222
00:19:51,007 --> 00:19:53,396
The animal was the beaver
223
00:19:53,407 --> 00:19:56,319
and this was his homeland.
224
00:19:56,767 --> 00:20:00,760
Now, why should anybody
want to invade the homeland
225
00:20:00,847 --> 00:20:05,637
of this most intelligent
and industrious and useful of animals?
226
00:20:08,007 --> 00:20:12,000
In those days, the rivers and streams
abounded with beavers,
227
00:20:11,847 --> 00:20:15,237
the famous bridge, tunnel and home builders,
228
00:20:15,687 --> 00:20:19,566
but it was not for himself,
it was for what he could be made into.
229
00:20:20,207 --> 00:20:25,804
And this was mainly it by a whimsy of fashion.
The beaver hat.
230
00:20:25,967 --> 00:20:31,564
This was the racy headgear in New York,
Boston, Philadelphia, Paris, London, Vienna.
231
00:20:31,727 --> 00:20:36,721
And, of course, it was an immense trade.
Both the British and the Americans got into it.
232
00:20:37,007 --> 00:20:43,799
In a curious way, a microcosm of the British
18th century versus Jeffersonian democracy
233
00:20:43,727 --> 00:20:48,755
happened right here in this setting,
6,000 miles from Regency London
234
00:20:49,007 --> 00:20:53,080
and over 2,000 miles from Mr Jefferson's study.
235
00:20:53,447 --> 00:20:58,999
Two opposing systems - the British system
was a straightforward class system.
236
00:20:59,207 --> 00:21:03,200
At the top, management -
the Englishman and the Scots.
237
00:21:03,047 --> 00:21:05,436
They did the hiring and they kept the books.
238
00:21:05,927 --> 00:21:08,839
Then the canoeists - usually French Canadians.
239
00:21:08,807 --> 00:21:12,595
At the bottom of the heap,
the Indians, the trappers.
240
00:21:12,647 --> 00:21:17,243
They shipped out from England
three different grades of Indian tea
241
00:21:17,447 --> 00:21:19,836
for the tastes of these three classes.
242
00:21:20,327 --> 00:21:23,717
The Indians were the people
who caught the pelts,
243
00:21:23,687 --> 00:21:28,681
they were the people who delivered the skins
to the British posts for a dollar a throw.
244
00:21:28,967 --> 00:21:34,360
And the British then sold them
in the international trade for $10.
245
00:21:34,527 --> 00:21:40,124
In came the Americans. With no idea of a system
or a hierarchy, they just set their own traps.
246
00:21:40,287 --> 00:21:42,881
And they got their own pelts
247
00:21:42,927 --> 00:21:49,639
and were delighted also to annex the Indian
trade and pay 3-4 times what the British did.
248
00:21:49,927 --> 00:21:54,318
So the Indians deserted the British companies
in large numbers.
249
00:21:54,247 --> 00:21:59,321
They were under contract and could have been
sued for breach, but they weren't.
250
00:21:59,527 --> 00:22:04,521
In the final document, it says that they were
condemned, several tribes condemned,
251
00:22:04,807 --> 00:22:07,196
for personal disloyalty to the Crown.
252
00:22:07,207 --> 00:22:10,802
Isn't that a marvellous echo of feudalism?
253
00:22:11,047 --> 00:22:16,838
The Americans didn't give a damn about loyalty
or whether you corrupted an Indian with money.
254
00:22:17,287 --> 00:22:23,283
They were just content to pay three times
the price and collar the trade, which they did.
255
00:22:23,047 --> 00:22:28,599
It didn't last too long, but you may wonder
where they got together to do all this buying.
256
00:22:28,807 --> 00:22:31,196
As I said, there were no settlements,
257
00:22:31,687 --> 00:22:35,999
but in this kind of setting,
there was something known as a rendezvous.
258
00:22:38,007 --> 00:22:42,797
In wide pastures at the foot of the mountains,
the trappers gathered with their pelts
259
00:22:43,287 --> 00:22:49,760
and the buyers came in with axes, kettles and
various seductive trinkets, not least whisky.
260
00:22:49,847 --> 00:22:55,046
They might come all the way from St Louis
and British Columbia, down the Pacific coast.
261
00:22:55,127 --> 00:22:59,917
It was, you might say,
the forerunner of the American trade fair.
262
00:23:04,887 --> 00:23:09,677
Gradually, the rendezvous gave way
to trading posts protected by stockades.
263
00:23:09,687 --> 00:23:14,681
In other words, forts,
but the private forts of very free enterprisers.
264
00:23:14,967 --> 00:23:19,757
Much later, they were bought up for hard cash
by a modest government institution
265
00:23:20,087 --> 00:23:22,885
known as the United States Cavalry.
266
00:23:26,967 --> 00:23:29,959
This was built far away on the Pacific coast.
267
00:23:30,327 --> 00:23:35,447
It was the fort of a roving soldier of fortune,
a debt-ridden buccaneer from Switzerland.
268
00:23:35,487 --> 00:23:40,880
Johann August Sutter,
a self-styled Columbus with big mustachios
269
00:23:40,767 --> 00:23:45,363
and a bigger ambition
to found and rule his own California colony.
270
00:23:46,767 --> 00:23:52,285
Well, he began humbly by hiring as his vice
president a Scottish carpenter named Marshall.
271
00:23:52,527 --> 00:23:56,918
They set up business on the American River
at Coloma, California,
272
00:23:56,847 --> 00:24:02,240
and what happened here changed the history
of America and convinced a gloomy Karl Marx
273
00:24:02,607 --> 00:24:06,885
that the collapse of American capitalism
would have to be postponed.
274
00:24:07,087 --> 00:24:12,798
They decided to go into, in a modest way,
the timber business together.
275
00:24:12,847 --> 00:24:17,637
At the end of 1847
they built, right here, a sawmill.
276
00:24:17,647 --> 00:24:20,445
And, one day the following January,
277
00:24:21,007 --> 00:24:25,398
James Marshall was doing
one of his more tedious chores,
278
00:24:25,327 --> 00:24:30,037
he was inspecting and cleaning out
the tailrace of the sawmill, the water channel,
279
00:24:30,127 --> 00:24:32,766
for clogged debris and so on.
280
00:24:33,007 --> 00:24:36,966
And then he spotted
something he'd never seen before.
281
00:24:37,727 --> 00:24:40,719
Small particles about the size of peas,
282
00:24:41,087 --> 00:24:44,875
very hard and shiny... and yellow.
283
00:24:45,887 --> 00:24:49,482
And he later said, "I sat down on the bank
284
00:24:49,727 --> 00:24:52,525
"and began to think mighty hard."
285
00:24:52,607 --> 00:24:57,203
One of the simplest and most fateful sentences
in American history.
286
00:24:57,407 --> 00:25:02,003
He took the particles to Sutter
and they weighed them on apothecary's scales,
287
00:25:02,207 --> 00:25:07,201
checked their findings in an encyclopaedia
and then they made a breathtaking guess
288
00:25:07,487 --> 00:25:10,081
and they swore each other to secrecy about it.
289
00:25:09,887 --> 00:25:12,879
But within a week, it was out
290
00:25:13,247 --> 00:25:17,240
and within a year
the whole world had heard about it
291
00:25:17,567 --> 00:25:23,278
and the American River became
suddenly as famous as the Mississippi.
292
00:25:43,647 --> 00:25:48,437
When the news hit the East and spread
to Germany, France, Scotland and Cornwall,
293
00:25:48,847 --> 00:25:53,045
people thought all you had to do
was lower a pan into a sluggish stream,
294
00:25:53,167 --> 00:25:57,957
shake it several times
and sift out a fortune in gold.
295
00:26:06,527 --> 00:26:11,521
You could go by one of four ways - by clipper
around the Horn, which was long and tedious,
296
00:26:11,327 --> 00:26:17,243
by ship to Panama and Nicaragua or down to
Mexico to dash across the desert to the Pacific.
297
00:26:17,727 --> 00:26:23,916
These ways cost money. For the ordinary hopeful,
the cheap, the only way was to walk
298
00:26:23,887 --> 00:26:26,276
after a train trip to the mid-west.
299
00:26:26,567 --> 00:26:30,242
And this was the point of departure -
St Joseph, Missouri,
300
00:26:30,487 --> 00:26:34,480
where the railroad ended
and the Middle Ages began.
301
00:26:43,167 --> 00:26:47,160
So here by the Missouri River,
near the town of St Joe,
302
00:26:47,487 --> 00:26:52,880
is the supply centre, the outfitting post,
the launch pad of the '49ers.
303
00:26:52,767 --> 00:26:55,759
And this is what you had to have. First, mules.
304
00:26:56,127 --> 00:26:58,721
Or ox, or both, if you were lucky.
305
00:26:59,007 --> 00:27:03,000
The oxen were much better
on the early stretches of the prairie
306
00:27:02,847 --> 00:27:05,839
because they could get their feed
wherever they browsed.
307
00:27:06,207 --> 00:27:08,437
But in the most precipitous mountains,
308
00:27:08,607 --> 00:27:14,000
the mules could maintain any foothold
they chose, and it was their choice.
309
00:27:13,887 --> 00:27:19,519
Not for nothing did the idiom come into the
language, "As stubborn as a Missouri mule".
310
00:27:19,967 --> 00:27:24,961
Now, if you had some mules of your own and
they were already broken in, so much the better.
311
00:27:25,247 --> 00:27:29,638
If you didn't, you had to buy
what was available at the going price.
312
00:27:29,567 --> 00:27:34,163
Many a family sank its savings
in the purchase of a few mules,
313
00:27:34,367 --> 00:27:38,360
and because this supply base
was so far from home,
314
00:27:38,687 --> 00:27:42,680
you can imagine that there was
a good deal of sharp practice.
315
00:27:42,527 --> 00:27:44,165
Then the wagon.
316
00:27:44,447 --> 00:27:47,644
Take a good look at this
because this is the genuine article,
317
00:27:47,807 --> 00:27:52,244
not the Hollywood omnibus
that we've grown so fond of.
318
00:27:52,527 --> 00:27:56,725
It's really a strengthened regular farm wagon.
319
00:27:57,807 --> 00:28:03,200
High-axled, very often caulked so that they could
ford the streams that they would have to cross.
320
00:28:04,047 --> 00:28:09,599
And they wouldn't think twice
about taking the essential necessities
321
00:28:09,807 --> 00:28:13,686
of a pistol or a shotgun and a rifle.
322
00:28:14,607 --> 00:28:18,566
The usual ratio was five persons to one wagon.
323
00:28:19,167 --> 00:28:24,719
Here they kept their lot
of horse shoe nails, axes, repair kit.
324
00:28:24,927 --> 00:28:28,124
All right, what did you put in the wagon?
325
00:28:29,247 --> 00:28:33,843
The great trick was not to overload
or underload, to hit it just right.
326
00:28:34,047 --> 00:28:39,246
By the time you got here, you'd certainly read,
maybe even memorised, one of these things -
327
00:28:39,327 --> 00:28:43,320
"The Emigrant's Guide To California",
published in a dozen languages,
328
00:28:43,647 --> 00:28:46,366
which told you that you must have...
329
00:28:47,007 --> 00:28:49,646
...150 pounds of flour,
330
00:28:49,887 --> 00:28:55,086
25 pounds of bacon,
25 pounds of sugar, 25 pounds of salt,
331
00:28:55,167 --> 00:28:57,556
15 pounds of coffee.
332
00:28:58,047 --> 00:29:00,038
That was the base.
333
00:28:59,967 --> 00:29:04,199
Then, if you were fairly well-to-do,
let's say, or prudent,
334
00:29:04,287 --> 00:29:09,680
you could take along maize,
corn meal, rice, prunes,
335
00:29:10,047 --> 00:29:14,962
which reminds me, except for the prunes,
you'll notice it's an immensely starchy diet,
336
00:29:15,327 --> 00:29:18,125
but they hadn't read about carbohydrates.
337
00:29:18,207 --> 00:29:23,201
Here we come to the portable kitchen -
all the pots and pans, the water barrel,
338
00:29:23,447 --> 00:29:27,042
the water jug, the lantern candle.
339
00:29:27,767 --> 00:29:30,486
Here the soap, lye soap.
340
00:29:31,367 --> 00:29:34,165
Also they took along some homely medicines,
341
00:29:34,247 --> 00:29:39,037
especially petroleum, which at that time
was being touted as a wonder drug.
342
00:29:40,487 --> 00:29:45,277
Here is the hopeful item,
which is the pick and the pan.
343
00:29:45,287 --> 00:29:50,077
That was for the fortune which you would take
out of El Dorado when you got there.
344
00:29:50,167 --> 00:29:52,965
Then the personal belongings in those chests.
345
00:29:53,287 --> 00:29:59,396
An overcoat, eight shirts, two pairs of boots,
an oil cloth cap, a rubber knapsack.
346
00:30:00,567 --> 00:30:04,355
And then anything... any hobby,
maybe a mouth organ.
347
00:30:04,407 --> 00:30:09,356
Some people even took a harp,
by way of the late-night show.
348
00:30:09,687 --> 00:30:14,397
So you stowed and secured all these things
and then you started off up the river,
349
00:30:14,487 --> 00:30:16,876
or right here you could take a ferry.
350
00:30:17,247 --> 00:30:21,638
Snows had gone from the prairie,
the spring rains had come and gone
351
00:30:21,807 --> 00:30:23,604
and there was forage for the animals
352
00:30:23,607 --> 00:30:28,362
and the long trek started
across the wide Missouri.
353
00:30:47,447 --> 00:30:52,646
These companies kept journals and for a few
halcyon weeks they remarked on good pasture,
354
00:30:53,087 --> 00:30:55,681
clear running rivers and shade trees for rest.
355
00:30:55,767 --> 00:30:58,156
But then they came to these high plains
356
00:30:58,167 --> 00:31:01,079
and from here on nature was not so kind.
357
00:31:04,927 --> 00:31:07,316
The journey was 2,000 miles long
358
00:31:07,327 --> 00:31:11,115
and it would take four months,
if you were lucky.
359
00:31:11,647 --> 00:31:15,640
And the ideal rate of speed
was no more than 15 miles a day.
360
00:31:15,487 --> 00:31:19,480
That was sensible
for both the animals and the humans.
361
00:31:19,807 --> 00:31:24,005
And this was the ideal manageable team.
362
00:31:24,127 --> 00:31:27,119
Six, seven, no more than eight wagons.
363
00:31:27,487 --> 00:31:32,277
There were companies
that took 15, 20, 30 wagons,
364
00:31:32,287 --> 00:31:37,281
but they found when they came to this bare land
where the timber gave out
365
00:31:37,567 --> 00:31:43,085
that so did the ample forage and
the big companies simply slowed to a crawl.
366
00:31:43,327 --> 00:31:47,320
In fact, there were companies
that split up quite amicably
367
00:31:47,167 --> 00:31:49,761
into units of just this size.
368
00:31:51,967 --> 00:31:56,358
These units would have to be self-sustaining
when the going got rough,
369
00:31:56,407 --> 00:32:01,640
but for long stretches different parties
could follow the known trail in packs.
370
00:32:01,807 --> 00:32:05,004
Far from salt licks when their bacon went bad,
371
00:32:05,167 --> 00:32:09,160
God provided protein on the hoof
in the shape of the bison,
372
00:32:09,327 --> 00:32:12,125
always called in America the buffalo.
373
00:32:20,687 --> 00:32:23,804
The next big problem was the wide rivers.
374
00:32:23,927 --> 00:32:28,876
A few river men made a living
by ferrying the timid at outrageous prices.
375
00:32:29,047 --> 00:32:31,436
Mostly, they floated their wagons and mules
376
00:32:31,447 --> 00:32:36,840
and hoped they would not add to the surprisingly
high casualty list of deaths by drowning.
377
00:32:43,447 --> 00:32:48,840
These are actual wagon ruts left by the '49ers
as they went through Wyoming.
378
00:32:49,887 --> 00:32:54,881
They're so well-defined today because of the
great volume of traffic that chose this trail
379
00:32:54,687 --> 00:32:57,565
and because of the rocky base of the soil.
380
00:32:59,327 --> 00:33:04,924
The trails could be 10, 20 miles apart,
according to whose emigrant's guide you used,
381
00:33:05,087 --> 00:33:08,875
but the word got around
that the really safe trail,
382
00:33:08,927 --> 00:33:13,318
as the land crumpled and rose towards
the foothills of the Rockies, was this one
383
00:33:13,247 --> 00:33:19,641
that had been discovered by a fur trader,
a trapper, in 1830, and so they all came here.
384
00:33:19,967 --> 00:33:26,759
If you'd stood here in the June, any June,
of 1849-50, right through that decade,
385
00:33:27,167 --> 00:33:32,161
you would have seen something like
a quarter of a million people come through
386
00:33:31,967 --> 00:33:34,561
with their wagons and their possessions.
387
00:33:50,567 --> 00:33:53,161
(CRASH OF THUNDER)
388
00:34:01,127 --> 00:34:04,802
Now they were going
over the high, flat hump of the Rockies.
389
00:34:04,887 --> 00:34:09,278
They'd steered a safe way between
the towering peaks of the north and south.
390
00:34:09,207 --> 00:34:13,598
They paid for this easy passage
by finding themselves up in the clouds
391
00:34:14,007 --> 00:34:16,601
where the storms are brewed.
392
00:34:16,887 --> 00:34:21,881
Slowed by boggy trails, they discovered
rather late how badly they were overloaded
393
00:34:21,687 --> 00:34:26,681
and they dumped bedsteads, stoves, frying pans,
anything to lighten and quicken the journey.
394
00:34:30,327 --> 00:34:35,720
By mid-summer, they were in central Wyoming
and came on this rocky landmark.
395
00:34:35,607 --> 00:34:39,202
Climbing it became almost a patriotic duty
396
00:34:39,567 --> 00:34:43,606
and inscribing the usual graffiti
a point of pride.
397
00:35:01,807 --> 00:35:06,801
Since they usually hit it around the 4th
of July, they christened it Independence Rock.
398
00:35:08,767 --> 00:35:11,235
This night formation is the classic Western shot
399
00:35:11,167 --> 00:35:13,840
to suggest an emergency defence
against Indians.
400
00:35:14,207 --> 00:35:16,801
In fact, they had very little Indian trouble.
401
00:35:17,087 --> 00:35:21,877
The point was that as the forage got scarcer
and the animals had the urge to roam,
402
00:35:21,807 --> 00:35:24,401
they corralled them in circles.
403
00:35:24,687 --> 00:35:28,680
# You calculate on 60 days
to take you over the plains
404
00:35:28,527 --> 00:35:32,725
# But there you lack for bread and meat
For coffee and for brains
405
00:35:33,327 --> 00:35:37,320
# Your 60 days are 100 or more
Your grub you've got to divide
406
00:35:37,167 --> 00:35:42,560
# Your steers and mules are alkalied
So foot it, you cannot ride
407
00:35:44,847 --> 00:35:49,045
# There's not a log to make a seat
along the River Platte
408
00:35:49,167 --> 00:35:53,285
# So when you eat you've got to stand
or sit down square and flat
409
00:35:53,487 --> 00:35:57,878
# It's fun to cook with buffalo chips
Take one that's newly born
410
00:35:58,287 --> 00:36:03,077
# If I knew once what I know now
I'd have gone around the Horn #
411
00:36:10,287 --> 00:36:16,283
The people clattering along here were still
ahead of the rich men puking around the Horn,
412
00:36:16,527 --> 00:36:18,916
but they weren't much happier.
413
00:36:18,927 --> 00:36:23,523
They were now in western Wyoming,
where a river is in flood one day
414
00:36:23,727 --> 00:36:26,116
and a dry bed the next.
415
00:36:26,127 --> 00:36:29,005
By now a bubbling spring was a gift from God.
416
00:36:29,967 --> 00:36:35,360
They thought the surrounding pasture was
a guarantee of more springs and plain sailing.
417
00:36:35,727 --> 00:36:39,322
Indeed,
they christened this place Pacific Springs,
418
00:36:39,567 --> 00:36:43,560
but they were still 1,000 miles away
from California,
419
00:36:43,407 --> 00:36:48,322
where this man, if he keeps it up,
will be tomorrow night.
420
00:36:49,647 --> 00:36:53,640
They, with luck, would push on 15 miles a day
421
00:36:53,967 --> 00:36:56,959
across the rolling desert of Utah.
422
00:36:59,247 --> 00:37:03,638
The dry flatland west of the Rockies
goes on forever, too,
423
00:37:04,047 --> 00:37:08,643
and once across Utah
they still faced a 350-mile span
424
00:37:08,847 --> 00:37:13,443
following the Humboldt River
across the bone-bright wilderness
425
00:37:13,647 --> 00:37:16,241
that is now the state of Nevada.
426
00:37:26,127 --> 00:37:28,721
And, in the beginning, all was well,
427
00:37:29,487 --> 00:37:34,561
but by the time they got down certainly as far
as here, which is 300 miles down the Humboldt,
428
00:37:34,767 --> 00:37:36,678
then the grass gave out.
429
00:37:36,687 --> 00:37:39,997
This stuff is not asparagus,
it's sage and creosote
430
00:37:40,527 --> 00:37:46,318
and mesquite, cat's claw,
some of it actually poisonous, all of it arid.
431
00:37:46,287 --> 00:37:51,486
And, much worse, their lifeline,
their water, the river itself,
432
00:37:51,567 --> 00:37:56,482
now began to get sluggish and fetid
and, as you see,
433
00:37:56,847 --> 00:38:03,241
it took on this ominous, yellow, milky-green
look which shows it's impregnated with alkali.
434
00:38:04,047 --> 00:38:09,644
And very often, in places where it was
most dense, cattle that drank it actually died.
435
00:38:09,807 --> 00:38:15,404
Some of them were poisoned. The humans boiled
it, but nevertheless had perpetual dysentery.
436
00:38:16,527 --> 00:38:20,725
By this time, they had of course
been together three, four months.
437
00:38:20,847 --> 00:38:23,839
It was now 100-110 degrees at noon
438
00:38:24,207 --> 00:38:27,802
and human nerves began to snap.
439
00:38:27,567 --> 00:38:33,278
There were several accidental Freudian killings.
People went mad.
440
00:38:33,807 --> 00:38:38,597
One man shot his brother because he could
no longer stand the sound of his voice.
441
00:38:38,607 --> 00:38:42,600
This was, they thought at the time,
the nadir of the trek.
442
00:38:42,927 --> 00:38:45,316
Certainly brotherly love gave out.
443
00:38:45,327 --> 00:38:50,242
Something else gave out, which the people
who knew about it dreaded to mention
444
00:38:50,607 --> 00:38:52,996
and the people who didn't discovered too late.
445
00:38:53,087 --> 00:38:57,877
The river itself, foul as it was,
it dribbled out into a marsh
446
00:38:57,887 --> 00:39:00,481
and dried up under the burning sun.
447
00:39:08,327 --> 00:39:12,718
This was something the travellers
could not credit till it happened.
448
00:39:12,647 --> 00:39:15,036
They were all from Europe and the East.
449
00:39:15,047 --> 00:39:19,837
They had never seen rivers
that simply evaporated and left a scum.
450
00:39:23,767 --> 00:39:27,760
Beyond the Humboldt sink
was nothing but the alkali desert.
451
00:39:27,607 --> 00:39:30,201
65 miles without any water at all.
452
00:39:31,447 --> 00:39:35,042
It was at this point
that they began to appreciate very late
453
00:39:35,287 --> 00:39:38,836
that their own lives
depended on their animals.
454
00:39:38,647 --> 00:39:42,435
They could make this waterless 65 miles
in 52 hours.
455
00:39:42,967 --> 00:39:47,916
The animals needed to rest more than usual, but
they couldn't let them. They had to push them.
456
00:39:47,767 --> 00:39:52,158
And when they collapsed
they had to leave them to die. One man said,
457
00:39:52,567 --> 00:39:56,958
"You could not possibly mistake the trail
through the Humboldt Desert.
458
00:39:56,887 --> 00:40:02,678
"It was littered at intervals of only 30 yards
with the skeletons of horses, oxen and mules
459
00:40:03,127 --> 00:40:05,925
"and the corpses of human beings."
460
00:40:09,847 --> 00:40:13,442
Some people died of starvation,
thirst or dysentery.
461
00:40:13,687 --> 00:40:16,679
Some people died of just having had it.
462
00:40:17,527 --> 00:40:19,916
They put up wooden markers for their dead.
463
00:40:20,407 --> 00:40:23,524
It wasn't that they hadn't time to bury them,
which they didn't,
464
00:40:23,767 --> 00:40:28,716
but that you can't shovel a grave
out of crumpled concrete like this.
465
00:40:29,527 --> 00:40:33,520
So it would just have a little board.
"Tom Warmsley, born Yorkshire,
466
00:40:33,847 --> 00:40:36,441
"died this spot, August 2nd, 1849."
467
00:40:38,167 --> 00:40:42,957
And then it occurred to some people
that you couldn't get word back to the relatives
468
00:40:43,327 --> 00:40:46,319
that he died nowhere, so they made place names.
469
00:40:46,207 --> 00:40:51,804
Wherever the trail turned or there was
a new vista, they would make up a name.
470
00:40:52,927 --> 00:40:58,684
And so the news would get back
to Geneva or Glasgow or... Frankfurt
471
00:40:59,167 --> 00:41:05,766
that their son had died in Endurance, Nevada.
That was the kind of name they thought up.
472
00:41:05,887 --> 00:41:08,276
And you can still see them.
473
00:41:08,287 --> 00:41:13,680
I have automobile road maps that still contain,
over this great wilderness of Nevada,
474
00:41:14,047 --> 00:41:19,041
the names given by the '49ers
to a stretch of nothing.
475
00:41:18,847 --> 00:41:23,637
Such names as Fortitude, Desolation,
476
00:41:24,127 --> 00:41:26,322
Last Gasp.
477
00:41:37,327 --> 00:41:41,923
For those who survived
the ghastly ordeal of the Humboldt,
478
00:41:42,127 --> 00:41:47,121
there was the sudden miracle of tumbling water
and shade trees and rising hills.
479
00:41:48,367 --> 00:41:50,756
But these blessings were a warning
480
00:41:50,767 --> 00:41:55,557
of one last huge hurdle
which some Europeans had never even heard of.
481
00:41:56,047 --> 00:42:00,165
They thought the last great
western mountain range was the Rockies,
482
00:41:59,887 --> 00:42:01,684
but these are not the Rockies.
483
00:42:02,287 --> 00:42:06,599
They are the great granite fortress
of the High Sierra.
484
00:42:22,447 --> 00:42:27,237
The later parties learnt well that you must
get through here before the heavy snows,
485
00:42:27,727 --> 00:42:30,116
which began in early September.
486
00:42:30,127 --> 00:42:33,915
If you didn't, if you yielded
to travellers' tales of short cuts,
487
00:42:33,967 --> 00:42:36,322
which often turned into lethal long cuts,
488
00:42:36,527 --> 00:42:39,564
then you were frozen in your tracks.
489
00:42:39,887 --> 00:42:44,005
An earlier party, misled and running late,
was hemmed in for the winter
490
00:42:44,127 --> 00:42:46,721
and took to cannibalism.
491
00:42:47,487 --> 00:42:52,083
This was the time when the freewheeling teams
no longer laughed with scorn
492
00:42:52,287 --> 00:42:58,556
at the companies that had started out with
military discipline in written constitutions.
493
00:42:59,007 --> 00:43:01,396
They kept good order and made it.
494
00:43:01,407 --> 00:43:07,596
The others might have to junk their wagons
and stumble on foot down the western slopes
495
00:43:07,647 --> 00:43:14,246
to come at last on the balmy paradise
so lovingly painted by eastern artists
496
00:43:14,367 --> 00:43:16,756
who had never seen it.
497
00:43:17,247 --> 00:43:21,035
One way or another they tumbled
down to the gold fields,
498
00:43:21,087 --> 00:43:23,885
the ultimate goal of the '49ers.
499
00:43:26,847 --> 00:43:33,241
We're on that road now, which is appropriately
called California State Highway Route 49.
500
00:43:34,527 --> 00:43:39,123
But the '49ers didn't leave
any grim place names here.
501
00:43:39,327 --> 00:43:42,285
The snow was over, heat came, they had grass.
502
00:43:42,047 --> 00:43:47,440
They called their little camps
Pine Vista and Cool and Lotus.
503
00:43:47,807 --> 00:43:50,605
But it wasn't lotus-land for a lot of them.
504
00:43:50,687 --> 00:43:54,282
The rich diggings were collared by a few people
505
00:43:54,527 --> 00:44:01,126
who became the founding families,
the nobs of San Francisco.
506
00:44:01,367 --> 00:44:06,157
And the rest of them, getting pretty desperate,
having a very rough time, getting no gold,
507
00:44:06,167 --> 00:44:12,356
pounded up and down these valleys and invaded
the neighbouring vast acreage of Sutter himself
508
00:44:12,407 --> 00:44:17,527
and burnt up his house and his farms
because he wanted to stop them.
509
00:44:17,967 --> 00:44:23,360
Marshall himself, here by his derelict mill
in 1852, was bilked out of every claim,
510
00:44:23,247 --> 00:44:28,526
died in poverty and was rewarded, five years
after his death, with a bronze statue.
511
00:44:29,567 --> 00:44:33,560
If you didn't have the luck and the guile,
as well as the muscle,
512
00:44:33,407 --> 00:44:35,637
you didn't, as they said, pan out.
513
00:44:36,087 --> 00:44:39,602
Literally, most people found nothing,
514
00:44:39,767 --> 00:44:43,760
sent home ironical photographs
of non-existent fortunes,
515
00:44:43,927 --> 00:44:49,206
fought over tiny stakes, murdered each other or
lived on a pittance alongside luckless diggings
516
00:44:49,127 --> 00:44:54,121
to which they gave grim, hilarious names -
Humbug Canyon, Knock 'Em Stiff,
517
00:44:54,567 --> 00:44:57,365
Brandy Gulch, Poverty Hill.
518
00:44:59,367 --> 00:45:02,040
And in the growing port of San Francisco,
519
00:45:02,207 --> 00:45:07,201
grown in five years from a group
of wind-blown shacks into a booming port,
520
00:45:07,007 --> 00:45:10,079
fed by a seaborne invasion round the Horn.
521
00:45:10,567 --> 00:45:15,357
The bay was crammed with the ships of owners
willing to stake a passage home
522
00:45:15,367 --> 00:45:21,283
to men who could chalk up a 2,000-mile walk
to nothing but experience.
523
00:45:21,607 --> 00:45:24,405
(MUSIC: CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME)
524
00:45:37,487 --> 00:45:42,277
I don't think we should get too carried away
by the famous ordeal of the Gold Rush.
525
00:45:42,287 --> 00:45:48,157
Of course, it took courage to walk across
the empty continent. Courage or insensibility.
526
00:45:48,327 --> 00:45:51,125
But, historically, it was a freak.
527
00:45:51,207 --> 00:45:56,600
The people who built this city
on nine sand hills were sudden adventurers.
528
00:45:56,967 --> 00:46:02,360
Their aim was not to settle
Mr Jefferson's open West.
529
00:46:02,247 --> 00:46:08,197
The American continent was an intermediate
nuisance between them and a quick fortune,
530
00:46:08,487 --> 00:46:13,481
but way back there, 2,000 miles,
where the blue Appalachians arise,
531
00:46:13,767 --> 00:46:20,206
those were the truer pioneers, the people who
slogged across Kentucky and Illinois and Ohio,
532
00:46:20,487 --> 00:46:23,399
and gradual settlers,
533
00:46:23,367 --> 00:46:27,997
people whose only aim
was to extend the stretch of America
534
00:46:28,167 --> 00:46:31,045
that could be called the homeland.
535
00:46:42,247 --> 00:46:46,240
Do you remember the people
we called the first frontiersmen,
536
00:46:46,087 --> 00:46:48,885
the ordinary folk making a home in a clearing?
537
00:46:49,327 --> 00:46:53,923
I think of one such family
that started a farm on rocky soil,
538
00:46:54,127 --> 00:46:57,722
a dim sort of husband,
married to a frail mountain girl.
539
00:46:57,567 --> 00:47:01,719
They failed and picked a new place
and, in time, they had a barn
540
00:47:02,167 --> 00:47:05,955
and a few animals,
a little corral, a split-rail fence.
541
00:47:06,007 --> 00:47:08,726
And they planted corn and flax and beans.
542
00:47:08,887 --> 00:47:14,564
Then their neighbours went down with the milk
sickness from cows that chewed on snakeroot.
543
00:47:14,847 --> 00:47:17,236
Our farmer's wife died.
544
00:47:17,247 --> 00:47:22,241
So the vagabond father and slow-moving son
pushed on again to a new state, new ground,
545
00:47:23,007 --> 00:47:27,797
the son passing from an almost animal childhood
to a bleak boyhood.
546
00:47:29,247 --> 00:47:34,799
They were not adventurers and they were
not scoundrels, or even very good farmers.
547
00:47:35,967 --> 00:47:41,439
But out of that frail woman and her listless
husband and the poorest ground,
548
00:47:41,727 --> 00:47:45,720
there came something
strange and wholly admirable -
549
00:47:46,047 --> 00:47:48,766
that slow-moving pioneer son,
550
00:47:48,927 --> 00:47:53,762
who seized the republic
and held it through its first cataclysm.
551
00:48:00,647 --> 00:48:07,041
We are talking about nothing less than the
most moving life in the American experience,
552
00:48:07,847 --> 00:48:11,078
that of Abraham Lincoln.