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In a comfortable house in New York,
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Walt Whitman, in his old age,
thought back to the West of his youth.
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The enormous skies,
the ramparts of the mountains.
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The uninhabited silence, the ocean of sage.
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And ever the cowboy
with his broad-brimmed hat,
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with loose arms raised,
and swinging as he rides.
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So far, in the history of the West, we've looked
at explorers, scouts, hunters, gold rushers -
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people who crossed the wilderness
and exploited some of it,
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but didn't domesticate any part of it.
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In the 1840s, there suddenly appeared
an astonishing body of people.
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Led by a second Moses, they walked into
the West, 1,000 miles beyond anybody else,
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right across that enormous gap of the continent,
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right over the crest of the Rockies.
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And in a desert basin, right here, they founded
the first successful Western community.
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And this is it.
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The City of the Saints.
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(CHOIR SINGS "COME, COME, YE SAINTS")
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(COOKE) To the rest of us,
this is Salt Lake City, Utah,
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but to the faithful, it is Rome and Mecca.
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The Mormon capital of the world, conceived in
the nightmares or visions of a 15-year-old boy
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who was told by God and Jesus Christ
and the Angel of the Lord
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to found the only true church.
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When he died in the Midwest, the first Mormons
were led 1,500 miles to this spot
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by an autocrat named Brigham Young.
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He looked down on this valley and said, "This is
the place where the devil cannot dig us out."
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# To see the saints their rest obtain
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# Oh, how we'll make this chorus swell
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# All is well
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# All is well #
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All is well in a secular sense, too, for the Church
owns most of the office buildings, theatres,
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real estate, insurance, banks.
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The Church's hold on the social and economic
life of the faithful is as strong as ever,
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except in the famous matter of polygamy.
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Perhaps nothing annoys a man with one wife
more than another man with many wives
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who doesn't even feel guilty.
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Utah was denied statehood for 50 years
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until the Mormons agreed
to have and hold one wife at a time.
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(MAN) We've come to
one of the most interesting rooms
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in the Visitors' Center
on Temple Square in Salt Lake City.
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This room is called the Pioneer Room.
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And here portrayed in beautiful painting,
and also in film,
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is the coming to the West
of the Mormon people.
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(COOKE) Its founder, Joseph Smith,
that visionary farm boy,
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tried to plant the Church first in New York,
then Ohio, then Missouri,
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but his flock was beaten and raped,
and their banks burnt out.
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For the Mormons were not only holier
than thou, they were thriftier.
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Their prosperity was as nauseating
as their polygamy,
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and always their banks were burned.
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0n into Illinois, the rumour went ahead that
they were nothing but wholesale adulterers,
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so their next settlement was burned down, and
Joseph Smith was jailed, and then dragged out
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and shot.
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Then Brigham Young took over.
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Over there in the next scene
is shown the trek across the plains.
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(COOKE) Across Nebraska and Wyoming,
over the Rockies into the Salt Lake Valley.
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He was the most iron-willed of the survivors,
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and here he began his iron rule.
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Sagebrush was what they found,
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and this is what they made of it.
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This belt of land which stretches through
central Utah, about half the length of England,
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is, as you see, all fertile now,
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and it is so because, in the beginning, of the
dictatorship, you might say, of Brigham Young.
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This was desert.
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And so, within six days of their arrival,
Brigham Young put out a set of decrees.
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Land was not to be bought or sold.
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It was to be assigned -
parcelled out - to individual settlers.
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If they couldn't make it productive,
they would have it taken away from them.
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All timber and all water resources
were to be held in common.
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In the two months remaining before the fall, they
were to plant crops and dig irrigation ditches.
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Water would be allotted according to a strict
system of fair division - which still holds.
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There is a rota, and according to the condition
of your soil and the needs of your crops,
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you are released water
at a given time on a given day.
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If the land that was assigned to them
turned out to be barren, that was just bad luck.
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They were not allowed to desert it.
They must try and make it fruitful.
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This didn't always happen,
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and some people died in the winter snows,
and others tried to exist on thorns and grasses.
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Anyway, against the odds of nature,
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and the suspicion and interference
of the United States government,
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against cheating whites and warring Indians,
they sowed and they planted and they reaped.
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It took half a century to make this desert bloom,
but they did it.
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The Church receives a regular share
of their income,
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and the Church organises the herds,
the feed and the sale of crops.
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In the depression of the 1930s,
the Mormons were the only American farmers
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who steadily refused all help
from the federal government.
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"The Lord alone giveth,
and the Lord taketh away."
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(CHOIR) # Hallelujah!
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# Hallelujah! #
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Every Tuesday, at Salt Lake airport,
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a group of 19-year-olds goes off for two years
on a proselytising mission.
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They journey to India, Mississippi,
Sweden, Japan...
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To the farthest lands that will take them.
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This team is off to reclaim the heathens
of Sheffield, Glasgow and Manchester.
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So, away they go.
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The latest generation
of the first domesticators of the West,
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whose present aim is to convert sinners,
both foreign and domestic,
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into Latter Day Saints.
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(CHOIR) # All is well #
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But to come down to earth,
where most of us sinners live,
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how did the majority of Americans
go about domesticating the wilderness?
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Well, they didn't. The majority
always has to be prodded by a fear,
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or inspired by a symbol.
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Let me show you what did the inspiring.
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This splendid mechanical beast,
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which now we condescendingly call
a "Puffing Billy" or an "Old Iron Horse".
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100 years ago, this was
as magical as a spaceship.
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It fired the American people with the idea
that once the Civil War was over,
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and the Union had held,
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it was now possible to unite the continent in
fact as well as in theory, and this would do it.
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Right after the Civil War,
two railroad companies,
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one pushing west from Omaha,
the other starting back from the Pacific,
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would build a track across 1,700 miles
of prairie and desert and mountains
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that lay between the railheads of the east
and the coast of California.
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People said it couldn't be done,
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but in 1866, it was begun by crews
that eventually grew to 10,000 men
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and as many animals.
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In the east, the gangs were recruited
from the defeated south,
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and from the sons of the Irish who had fled
in the potato famine of the 1840s.
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It took 400 tons of rail and timber
for every mile of track.
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The eastern company had a continuous
supply line back to the Atlantic,
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and they could move at a clip
across the endless flatlands ahead.
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But it was very much tougher
for the western company - the Central Pacific -
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which had to fetch most of its materials
in by sea, 12,000 miles round the Horn,
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including the locomotives,
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not to mention the workforce,
which pretty soon came in from China.
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It was said that, whereas the Union Pacific
was sustained by whisky,
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the Central Pacific was kept going on tea.
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These men in the West
soon came up against the mountains.
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While the easterners were racing along,
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these men were stripping forests
and painfully bridging and tunnelling.
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All in all, summer and winter,
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it took the western company two years
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to hurdle the formidable barrier
of the California High Sierra.
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1,000 miles back east, on the plains,
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while the Irish gangers frequently
fainted from the midsummer heat,
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the company officials
were revived by the thought
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that the government had promised
a subsidy of $16,000 per mile of track.
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And once they started to climb the Rockies,
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it went up to $48,000 per mile,
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with great stretches of free land
bordering the track thrown in.
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So they cheerfully stripped
vast stands of virgin forest
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for bridges, trestles and sleeper ties.
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All this was done by men moving a mile a day,
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working 100 hours a week
for two dollars a day.
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They slept in dormitory trains.
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They raised Cain in mobile track towns with
fly-by-night saloon keepers, gamblers, whores.
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They might look like a bunch of roughnecks,
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but they had special skills with such
exotic titles as Backfiller, Head Spiker,
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Track Winder, Tie Hack.
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After three years,
they'd come almost 1,000 miles
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and were on the high spine of the Rockies.
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And now, it was downhill.
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Congress had stipulated that the junction
should be at the California border,
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but in the end, it allowed them to build hell
for leather, and meet wherever they met.
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Which they did, at a place they christened
"Promontory Point" in Utah.
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The eastern company sent out a special train
for its directors and their ladies,
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and riding along were three companies
of infantry, and a regimental band.
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But this genteel company
was swamped by the men who'd done it,
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who had their own accompanying dignitaries
in the shape of cooks, gamblers, touts,
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madams and molls.
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The ceremony began with a prayer.
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The telegraph operator was finally connected
with San Francisco and New York,
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and ready to flash
the first coast-to-coast commentary.
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It began with an historic warning -
"Stand by, we've done praying."
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This motley crowd then watched the governor
of California lift a hammer over a golden spike
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to drive it into the last sleeper -
a piece of California laurel. He missed.
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But the faithful telegraph men
dubbed in the clang,
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and the word went around the world -
it was done.
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New York fired a 100-gun salute.
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Chicago's parade was seven miles long.
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Philadelphia rang the Liberty Bell.
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A San Francisco paper announced
the annexation of the United States.
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The country was excited by railroad mania
as a novelty, a tourist fashion,
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but much more as the missing link
between the enormous gap of the plains
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and the people who had settled them.
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The example of Promontory Point
spurred the railroads to put out branch lines
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into open country.
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We're in Kansas, in Abilene,
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and here in the spring of 1867
was where the railroad ended.
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There came through a 29-year-old livestock
trader from Chicago named Joseph McCoy.
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And he looked at the railroad
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and he looked at a map and he had an idea.
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He knew there was good grassland
all the way to Southern Texas.
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What could be simpler than to connect the cow
with the railroad, make a fortune,
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and add beef to the diet of millions?
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First, he had to buy the town -
there wasn't a town.
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It was 450 acres and a few cabins,
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but, luckily, they were owned by another man
from Illinois, Tim Hersey.
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Hersey sold the whole lot to McCoy
for five dollars an acre.
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By the way, Mrs Hersey, a God-fearing pioneer,
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one day opened the Bible at the Book of Luke,
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and she read there, chapter three, verse one,
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"The tetrarch of Abilene
in the province of Judea."
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And she liked it.
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So she christened the cabins Abilene.
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McCoy spent $5,000, which in those days
was a tremendous price,
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getting out advertising circulars
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and sending riders down to Texas
to promise the cowboy
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a safe trail and a fair price at the railhead.
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And so began the heyday of the Chisholm Trail.
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Scattered through Southern Texas
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were three million of these raw-boned,
half-wild cattle known as longhorns.
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Till now, they'd been slaughtered only,
for tallow and hides at four dollars a head,
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but at the end of a 4,000-mile trail,
there was Mr McCoy's bait of $40 a head.
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00:17:32,687 --> 00:17:38,398
The trail ran directly north through
largely unsettled and also Indian territory.
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The longhorns were as nervous as cats,
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and they could be stampeded
by a thunderstorm or a howling coyote.
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That meant a loss of ten pounds in weight,
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or a 10-to-20,000-dollar loss
on the herd at the railhead.
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The Indians exacted heavy tolls
for crossing their lands,
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or they acted as guides and misled the cattle
into marshes and quicksands.
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00:18:04,287 --> 00:18:10,283
After 100 days, the village of Abilene heard
a thunderstorm of hooves coming from the south.
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00:18:10,567 --> 00:18:12,762
It was the start of the cowboy legend.
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The arrival of this first herd
made McCoy the emperor of the cattle kingdom.
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00:18:34,807 --> 00:18:40,996
He boasted that he could deliver
200,000 cattle in the first decade.
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00:18:41,047 --> 00:18:43,038
He was wrong.
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00:18:43,447 --> 00:18:49,317
He shipped out of these stockyards,
in the first four years, over two million.
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00:18:49,527 --> 00:18:55,045
He was a man who delivered,
hence the expression "the real McCoy".
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Obviously, some bare acres and a few cabins
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couldn't possibly cope with as many
as 5,000 cowboys paid off in a single night.
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00:19:05,607 --> 00:19:08,565
McCoy did build them
some cabins - shacks -
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00:19:08,487 --> 00:19:11,559
but mostly the cowboys slept out on the prairie,
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00:19:11,847 --> 00:19:17,797
then wheeled their chuck wagons into town
and left them in front of their favourite haunts,
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00:19:18,087 --> 00:19:21,841
namely the saloons,
the gambling joints and the brothels.
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At the peak of the cattle trade, Abilene
was as rough as any town on this continent.
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Marshals came and went
by the simple application of the six-shooter,
225
00:19:31,527 --> 00:19:37,204
until the arrival of James Butler,
Wild Bill Hickok.
226
00:19:37,647 --> 00:19:40,957
He was nothing like the Gary Cooper
impersonation.
227
00:19:41,007 --> 00:19:43,601
He was something of a desperado himself.
228
00:19:43,887 --> 00:19:47,357
He was also a very fancy dude.
229
00:19:47,447 --> 00:19:48,926
But a murderous shot.
230
00:19:48,887 --> 00:19:51,321
He could take a hat, skim it into the air
231
00:19:51,767 --> 00:19:56,602
and perforate the rim with a circle
of bullet holes before it hit the ground.
232
00:19:56,567 --> 00:19:59,877
Happily, he decided to exercise
his marksmanship
233
00:19:59,927 --> 00:20:02,999
by joining the law and not fighting it.
234
00:20:03,287 --> 00:20:07,565
And this was the law. A ball and cap six-shooter.
235
00:20:07,607 --> 00:20:12,761
It had been developed during the Civil War.
It was very light, and I regret to say,
236
00:20:12,887 --> 00:20:15,765
it was the law in many more places than Abilene.
237
00:20:16,247 --> 00:20:20,365
For the next 10 or 15 years,
it was the law west of the Mississippi.
238
00:20:21,927 --> 00:20:24,361
The Wild West was exactly that.
239
00:20:24,687 --> 00:20:26,484
Even in a sheriff's posse,
240
00:20:26,447 --> 00:20:31,441
the difference between the good man
and the bad and the lucky was very blurred.
241
00:20:31,727 --> 00:20:35,640
Where every man toted a gun,
a drunk could wind up like a rustler,
242
00:20:35,887 --> 00:20:38,924
the victim of a neck-tie party.
243
00:20:46,927 --> 00:20:50,920
In the last century, we've created
a romantic legend of the West
244
00:20:51,167 --> 00:20:56,400
which has sugared the truth
of a harsh, sordid and violent life.
245
00:20:56,727 --> 00:20:59,287
The death rate in these small cow towns
246
00:20:59,607 --> 00:21:03,885
was certainly 20, 50 times as high
as that of New York City today.
247
00:21:05,927 --> 00:21:09,761
And out on the range where never
was heard a discouraging word
248
00:21:09,767 --> 00:21:12,486
but only the bellowing of poisoned cattle,
249
00:21:12,927 --> 00:21:18,399
all the feuds and sneaky murders were
about the three disputed necessities of life -
250
00:21:18,207 --> 00:21:20,163
who owned the cattle,
251
00:21:20,687 --> 00:21:23,155
who had the grazing rights,
252
00:21:23,087 --> 00:21:25,965
who could secure the waterholes.
253
00:21:28,207 --> 00:21:31,756
As bad as the cow towns, or worse,
were the mining settlements
254
00:21:32,167 --> 00:21:35,557
where footloose bachelors
hoped for gold or silver,
255
00:21:35,527 --> 00:21:38,439
but mostly hacked away at copper, tin or lead.
256
00:21:39,367 --> 00:21:42,803
And when they came up
from their dust-choked tunnels,
257
00:21:43,087 --> 00:21:48,036
they came up to raise hell on the streets
and in the saloons.
258
00:22:02,767 --> 00:22:06,237
Their towns were as impermanent
as their livelihood.
259
00:22:06,607 --> 00:22:12,000
A vein gave out, and three years after
this photograph, this town had gone to dust.
260
00:22:14,207 --> 00:22:18,598
The miner, like the cowboy,
didn't domesticate anything.
261
00:22:18,527 --> 00:22:24,762
That had to wait for the railroads campaign
to attract, not birds of passage, but settlers,
262
00:22:25,087 --> 00:22:29,797
and not only from the eastern states,
but from northern and central Europe.
263
00:22:30,007 --> 00:22:35,001
The railroad agents searched the continent
for landscapes with failed crops
264
00:22:34,927 --> 00:22:37,919
and cities with browbeaten minorities.
265
00:22:38,327 --> 00:22:43,401
But it was not only the poor and persecuted
who were drawn to the western plains.
266
00:22:43,527 --> 00:22:47,122
In the 1870s, the West was a fashionable caper
267
00:22:47,367 --> 00:22:50,598
to upper-crust English and Scots.
268
00:22:50,767 --> 00:22:56,160
There was one Sir George Grant who advertised
in the papers for a team of young bloods,
269
00:22:56,047 --> 00:22:58,561
preferably remittance men with money,
270
00:22:58,927 --> 00:23:02,602
to join him and found an English colony
in Western Kansas.
271
00:23:02,767 --> 00:23:06,442
This is where they came.
Within two years, he got his team.
272
00:23:06,607 --> 00:23:12,398
They collected some horses and a pack of South
Down sheep, and some Aberdeen Angus cattle,
273
00:23:12,367 --> 00:23:13,720
and they sailed away.
274
00:23:14,167 --> 00:23:18,285
When Sir George got to St Louis,
he said he wanted a steamboat.
275
00:23:18,487 --> 00:23:23,686
They said, "A steamboat on the western prairie
where you've always got the wind,
276
00:23:23,767 --> 00:23:25,485
"but where's the water?"
277
00:23:25,687 --> 00:23:32,081
Nevertheless, this English team had a fixed and
beautiful and very confused picture of the West,
278
00:23:31,927 --> 00:23:37,206
which included riverboat gamblers
and buffalo hunts and fox hunts,
279
00:23:37,687 --> 00:23:43,444
and playing poker and faro,
and having a brush with wild Indians,
280
00:23:43,447 --> 00:23:45,961
and, who knows, maybe with wild women?
281
00:23:46,327 --> 00:23:48,602
So... I'd love to have seen this.
282
00:23:48,727 --> 00:23:53,721
These crazy Englishmen dragged this steamboat
200 miles across the prairie.
283
00:23:53,527 --> 00:23:57,520
They didn't find a river.
They found a creek and they dammed it up,
284
00:23:57,847 --> 00:24:01,920
and made a little lake, navigable
for about eight or nine miles.
285
00:24:02,167 --> 00:24:05,000
Then they simply barged up and down the lake.
286
00:24:05,047 --> 00:24:07,436
Since they found there were no foxes,
287
00:24:07,927 --> 00:24:12,318
they contented themselves
with shooting coyotes and jackrabbits.
288
00:24:12,247 --> 00:24:16,160
It turned out that they were not
very good at cattle-raising,
289
00:24:16,567 --> 00:24:19,877
and the women were not
up to the legendary standard,
290
00:24:19,927 --> 00:24:23,761
and there was a withering drought
and the heat was infernal,
291
00:24:23,767 --> 00:24:27,999
so in the end, as one of them said,
the whole thing was a deuced bore,
292
00:24:28,087 --> 00:24:29,884
and the colony broke up.
293
00:24:30,007 --> 00:24:35,161
Sir George Grant did have the satisfaction
of having introduced to this country
294
00:24:35,287 --> 00:24:37,278
the Aberdeen Angus breed.
295
00:24:37,687 --> 00:24:43,444
And he saw that the township was named
after her gracious majesty Queen Victoria.
296
00:24:43,447 --> 00:24:47,565
Today, his name is given
to a school baseball park.
297
00:24:49,447 --> 00:24:54,441
And here, in Western Kansas at least,
are the last soldiers of the Queen.
298
00:25:06,927 --> 00:25:09,680
The Englishmen left of their own free will,
299
00:25:09,807 --> 00:25:14,801
but there were many peoples who came here,
who, if they failed, they were stuck.
300
00:25:15,087 --> 00:25:18,204
America, more than most countries,
301
00:25:18,447 --> 00:25:21,359
owes more to the persecuted of other nations.
302
00:25:21,327 --> 00:25:26,117
This church was built
by a band of Russian Catholics
303
00:25:26,407 --> 00:25:31,401
who came in here only a couple of years
before the Englishmen went home.
304
00:25:33,127 --> 00:25:38,599
They were the descendants of German Catholics
who had been persecuted at home
305
00:25:38,487 --> 00:25:44,039
and invited by Catherine the Great to go
into the Volga basin to improve the farming.
306
00:25:44,567 --> 00:25:48,799
Then, 100 years later, more persecutions,
so they came to America,
307
00:25:48,887 --> 00:25:54,962
and, in her honour, as the Englishmen had
named Victoria, they called this place Catherine.
308
00:25:55,127 --> 00:25:58,597
They had seen the advertisements
of the Union Pacific
309
00:25:58,487 --> 00:26:03,197
offering cheap passage and free lands
in the dream world beyond the seas.
310
00:26:03,767 --> 00:26:06,759
Now, why should they come
to the empty prairie?
311
00:26:06,647 --> 00:26:13,120
Well, all farmer immigrants had
an instinctive feel for the familiar land.
312
00:26:13,367 --> 00:26:17,679
Where does a Greek sponge-fisherman
ply his trade in the United States?
313
00:26:17,687 --> 00:26:19,405
Tarpon Springs, Florida.
314
00:26:19,607 --> 00:26:25,079
And the Poles went like homing pigeons to
Wisconsin and the eastern end of Long Island
315
00:26:25,367 --> 00:26:28,677
for the familiar sandy soil
and the potato growing.
316
00:26:28,727 --> 00:26:33,517
These Russians, like most immigrants,
did one thing, and they did it here.
317
00:26:34,007 --> 00:26:39,798
Each of them brought one bushel of their native
strain of wheat - Turkey Red Wheat.
318
00:26:39,767 --> 00:26:43,362
They'd been told that this was
no good for wheat farming,
319
00:26:43,607 --> 00:26:48,317
but they were stubborn and knew
they had a very resistant strain of wheat,
320
00:26:48,407 --> 00:26:51,877
that could stand heat and dryness,
and it flourished.
321
00:26:52,247 --> 00:26:56,479
It took only 20 years from the arrival
of the so-called "Roo-shuns",
322
00:26:56,567 --> 00:27:01,038
to the day that Kansas
became the wheat bowl of America.
323
00:27:25,127 --> 00:27:30,440
Today, and for the past 40 or 50 years, they've
had more wheat than America could use.
324
00:27:30,767 --> 00:27:33,998
They've left it to rot,
or been paid not to plant it.
325
00:27:34,127 --> 00:27:37,881
But 100 years ago, their forefathers
came out to arid land,
326
00:27:37,967 --> 00:27:41,562
and these were the first true inhabitants
of the plains.
327
00:27:41,807 --> 00:27:45,595
The homesteaders,
given by the government 160 free acres,
328
00:27:45,487 --> 00:27:49,685
on the gamble that they could make it
productive within five years.
329
00:27:50,167 --> 00:27:55,195
They introduced the new and stable element -
the family,
330
00:27:55,407 --> 00:27:59,480
beginning a raw life with very raw materials.
331
00:27:59,927 --> 00:28:04,045
No trees on the plains,
so their houses were made of dried sod,
332
00:28:04,327 --> 00:28:07,205
whimsically known as "prairie marble".
333
00:28:08,487 --> 00:28:13,197
For fuel, the dung of the buffalo.
No doctors and much sickness,
334
00:28:13,567 --> 00:28:18,277
and many men like this widower,
for whom not only the roof caved in.
335
00:28:18,367 --> 00:28:24,602
If his wife had lived, she like many another
might have literally gone mad from the scrimping,
336
00:28:24,567 --> 00:28:30,597
the infernal summers, the Arctic winters,
the ceaseless wind and the loneliness.
337
00:28:30,807 --> 00:28:34,516
# I am looking rather seedy now
338
00:28:34,847 --> 00:28:37,315
# While holding down my claim
339
00:28:37,567 --> 00:28:43,085
# And my victuals are not always of the best
340
00:28:43,247 --> 00:28:46,284
# And the mice play shyly round me
341
00:28:46,127 --> 00:28:48,960
# As I nestle down to rest
342
00:28:49,447 --> 00:28:54,726
# In my little old sod shanty in the West
343
00:28:55,367 --> 00:29:01,397
# Oh, the hinges are of leather
and the windows have no glass
344
00:29:01,887 --> 00:29:07,405
# While the board roof
lets the howling blizzards in
345
00:29:07,567 --> 00:29:10,957
# And I hear the hungry coyote
346
00:29:10,927 --> 00:29:13,760
# As he slinks up through the grass
347
00:29:14,127 --> 00:29:19,247
# Round my little old sod shanty on my claim #
348
00:29:32,207 --> 00:29:33,686
I don't have to tell you
349
00:29:33,647 --> 00:29:39,882
that the element that was the curse and the
blessing to the prairie farmer was the wind.
350
00:29:39,887 --> 00:29:46,486
Now, there's a simple thing. Any city child knows
that it heads into the wind and it draws water.
351
00:29:47,007 --> 00:29:49,282
It was one of three things
352
00:29:49,407 --> 00:29:55,437
that made it possible for those homesteaders
that you've seen to make a life on the plains.
353
00:29:56,607 --> 00:30:00,202
You know, I think we tend to believe
354
00:30:00,447 --> 00:30:05,805
that the roots of civilisation
are architecture, music, painting,
355
00:30:05,727 --> 00:30:07,683
but these were the late flower.
356
00:30:08,127 --> 00:30:12,120
Athens, Rome, Paris, London, New York
could not have been
357
00:30:11,967 --> 00:30:17,803
if the farmer had not been able
to plant and reap by the sun and the rain
358
00:30:18,207 --> 00:30:20,163
and the rhythm of the seasons.
359
00:30:20,127 --> 00:30:26,600
Civilisation, in fact, is based on a few
discoveries of awful, dramatic simplicity -
360
00:30:26,847 --> 00:30:30,283
the wheel, a staple crop, the plough.
361
00:30:31,167 --> 00:30:35,445
Now, for centuries, the European
had prepared the good ground
362
00:30:35,487 --> 00:30:40,117
with a plough that didn't work
on the American prairie.
363
00:30:40,287 --> 00:30:47,238
This matted sod which bakes under
a midsummer temperature of over 100 degrees,
364
00:30:47,567 --> 00:30:54,006
and is petrified in winter at 40 below zero,
which is 72 degrees of frost,
365
00:30:54,287 --> 00:31:01,284
and is baked all through the year by this
constant wind to the consistency of concrete.
366
00:31:01,007 --> 00:31:05,398
It was like trying to plough a crocodile's back,
367
00:31:05,807 --> 00:31:11,165
until a man named John Deere -
not surprisingly, he was a blacksmith -
368
00:31:11,087 --> 00:31:14,762
invented a plough with a steel face.
369
00:31:16,367 --> 00:31:18,437
This broke the sod.
370
00:31:18,927 --> 00:31:21,157
This turned it upside down.
371
00:31:21,327 --> 00:31:26,037
And for the first time, the homesteader
was able to break the prairie sod.
372
00:31:26,127 --> 00:31:30,200
Those were the two things.
The third thing was simpler still.
373
00:31:30,447 --> 00:31:32,438
Barbed wire.
374
00:31:32,367 --> 00:31:36,485
To us, it's as obvious
as a brick or a sheet of paper,
375
00:31:36,687 --> 00:31:39,326
but a century or more ago,
376
00:31:39,567 --> 00:31:45,119
if you and I could have seen
these early variations of barbed wire,
377
00:31:45,327 --> 00:31:49,400
I don't think we'd have had
the faintest idea what they were for.
378
00:31:49,647 --> 00:31:54,562
You see, the homesteader could get a crop
and make a livelihood and make a farm,
379
00:31:54,447 --> 00:31:58,486
but here on these vast plains, he had no timber,
380
00:31:58,767 --> 00:32:01,361
no way of making a wooden fence,
381
00:32:01,647 --> 00:32:05,560
of being able to fence in his farm
and say, "This land is mine."
382
00:32:05,487 --> 00:32:09,719
And so it was invaded all the time
by animals and thieves
383
00:32:09,807 --> 00:32:15,120
and most of all by cowboys whose herds
simply came and trampled down his crops.
384
00:32:15,567 --> 00:32:18,957
And then came barbed wire,
and what a blessing it was,
385
00:32:18,927 --> 00:32:23,842
because it redrew the domestic geography
of the United States.
386
00:32:24,207 --> 00:32:30,646
For the first time, it defined
the prairie farmers' private property.
387
00:32:30,927 --> 00:32:35,318
It's a very humble bit of hardware, isn't it?
388
00:32:35,247 --> 00:32:41,720
But, incidentally, it killed off the cowboy,
or, by denying him the open range,
389
00:32:42,167 --> 00:32:44,920
it turned him into a rancher.
390
00:33:13,327 --> 00:33:18,082
The longhorn gave way to quicker-fattening
breeds - the Hereford and Angus.
391
00:33:18,207 --> 00:33:22,405
The cowboy rancher has become
a family man, a mechanic,
392
00:33:22,527 --> 00:33:29,399
a salesman separating his product
from the other men's with the identity of a brand.
393
00:33:38,287 --> 00:33:41,882
The cowboys were outraged
by the invention of barbed wire,
394
00:33:42,127 --> 00:33:45,324
and attacked the homesteaders
with wire cutters.
395
00:33:45,407 --> 00:33:49,002
They provoked endless battles,
both legal and bloody,
396
00:33:49,167 --> 00:33:55,766
with families whose bales of barbed wire
were to ring their farms like a protective moat.
397
00:33:55,927 --> 00:34:00,000
In the end, the West was won
by the homesteader and his woman,
398
00:34:00,167 --> 00:34:04,285
the mother of the first generation
raised on the plains.
399
00:34:04,447 --> 00:34:10,079
She was mother, mistress, nurse, seamstress,
cook, accountant, comforter, teacher,
400
00:34:10,127 --> 00:34:14,325
who was known and treated,
even by the cowboys and the miners,
401
00:34:14,287 --> 00:34:17,757
as the untouchable madonna of the plains.
402
00:34:22,447 --> 00:34:28,841
Slowly, she acquired the symbols of
respectability. The dignity of a pony and trap,
403
00:34:28,767 --> 00:34:37,436
a frame house, and such high-tone
city amenities as wallpaper, carpets, pictures.
404
00:34:42,247 --> 00:34:47,879
We're back in Abilene, Kansas,
but 20 years after it was a wild cow town.
405
00:34:48,007 --> 00:34:52,000
By the 1890s, it was possible
for a strict and pious mother
406
00:34:52,327 --> 00:34:55,683
to raise a proud family in a house like this,
407
00:34:55,687 --> 00:34:59,680
and she it was who usually
accompanied the family hymn singing,
408
00:35:00,007 --> 00:35:04,080
and in the evenings read aloud books,
especially the Good Book,
409
00:35:03,847 --> 00:35:09,558
maintaining the frontier tradition which lasted
long, perhaps too long in American life,
410
00:35:10,087 --> 00:35:13,124
that culture belonged to the women.
411
00:35:12,967 --> 00:35:15,925
In her spare time, if she had any,
412
00:35:16,327 --> 00:35:21,560
she made the coverlets and the counterpanes
and the quilting, and hooked the rugs.
413
00:35:21,607 --> 00:35:26,158
This mother, who came to Abilene in 1892,
made this throw for the chair,
414
00:35:26,407 --> 00:35:31,083
and also on this cushion
wove the names of her seven sons.
415
00:35:31,207 --> 00:35:37,316
One of them died in infancy, but six of them
grew to manhood in this house.
416
00:35:37,927 --> 00:35:40,236
It's interesting, to say the least,
417
00:35:40,807 --> 00:35:43,958
to reflect that one of those boys, 50 years later,
418
00:35:44,167 --> 00:35:46,442
was able to lay down the law
419
00:35:46,567 --> 00:35:52,199
to a boy born in the marble halls
of Blenheim Palace.
420
00:35:52,327 --> 00:35:54,761
He, of course, was Winston Churchill,
421
00:35:54,727 --> 00:35:59,562
and you must have guessed we're talking
about the boy who became the man known as
422
00:36:00,007 --> 00:36:03,238
General and President Dwight D Eisenhower.
423
00:36:03,367 --> 00:36:06,439
This is Ike's boyhood home.
424
00:36:06,567 --> 00:36:10,037
And there you see his mother
reading a letter from Ike,
425
00:36:09,927 --> 00:36:13,761
telling her that he's been promoted
to a four-star general
426
00:36:14,287 --> 00:36:18,200
and given the command
of the invasion of Europe.
427
00:36:20,047 --> 00:36:21,366
The year he was born,
428
00:36:21,487 --> 00:36:27,517
the last big tract of Indian land was declared
open for settlement in Oklahoma.
429
00:36:27,407 --> 00:36:32,640
The claimants and the speculators were lined up
and ordered to wait for a starting gun.
430
00:36:33,087 --> 00:36:39,037
The itchy ones jumped the gun,
and were ever after known as "Sooners".
431
00:36:38,967 --> 00:36:41,925
Oklahoma is still called "The Sooner State".
432
00:36:46,127 --> 00:36:49,517
They raced off for the good land,
and the waterholes,
433
00:36:49,967 --> 00:36:52,401
and what might turn into a city centre.
434
00:36:52,367 --> 00:36:54,927
They banged in their stakes, bedded down.
435
00:36:55,327 --> 00:36:57,477
They quickly filed a legal claim,
436
00:36:57,727 --> 00:37:03,438
for in the past 20 years, much blood
had been spilt over disputed land claims.
437
00:37:03,367 --> 00:37:06,962
This picture goes to prove
that even 80 years ago,
438
00:37:07,127 --> 00:37:11,723
behind every successful American
sits a good lawyer.
439
00:37:13,007 --> 00:37:16,158
Rome, the schoolboy knows,
was not built in a day,
440
00:37:16,127 --> 00:37:20,598
but the Oklahoma schoolboy knows
that Guthrie, the first state capital,
441
00:37:20,927 --> 00:37:22,440
went up in an afternoon.
442
00:37:22,367 --> 00:37:25,598
The West was no longer wild or uncharted.
443
00:37:42,007 --> 00:37:47,001
All across the plains, the interior
was being conquered and domesticated.
444
00:37:47,287 --> 00:37:50,962
It had taken less than 30 years
for the whole progression,
445
00:37:51,047 --> 00:37:55,325
from bare ground to camp ground,
to prosperous home town.
446
00:38:42,527 --> 00:38:46,486
It was some sort of high-water mark
of civilisation on the plains
447
00:38:46,567 --> 00:38:52,005
when the Dodge City Amateur Dramatics
Society put on "A Midsummer Night's Dream".
448
00:38:54,087 --> 00:38:59,480
When the city fathers began to dress up
as cowboys, available for weddings and picnics,
449
00:38:59,367 --> 00:39:03,485
the Wild West declined into the title
of a travelling entertainment,
450
00:39:03,727 --> 00:39:08,847
presided over by the veteran slaughterer
of the buffalo, Colonel William Cody,
451
00:39:09,287 --> 00:39:11,164
now a prosperous impresario,
452
00:39:11,207 --> 00:39:15,120
and owner of a troop of Indians
tamed and trotted out as actors
453
00:39:15,047 --> 00:39:17,800
before large audiences at home and abroad,
454
00:39:18,407 --> 00:39:24,039
and even in the pop-eyed presence
of Queen Victoria.
455
00:39:24,127 --> 00:39:26,118
How about the Indians?
456
00:39:26,047 --> 00:39:29,039
The thousands
who'd never heard of Buffalo Bill?
457
00:39:29,447 --> 00:39:32,086
What happened to the Indian tribes?
458
00:39:32,327 --> 00:39:34,318
Did they just vanish?
459
00:39:34,247 --> 00:39:38,479
You may remember that first
they were banished to the wilderness.
460
00:39:38,567 --> 00:39:43,846
Then, in the last decades of the 19th century,
they were chased there and cornered
461
00:39:44,327 --> 00:39:46,318
and conquered.
462
00:39:46,247 --> 00:39:48,841
And it's not too long ago - it occurs to me
463
00:39:49,127 --> 00:39:54,918
that Churchill was born in the year
of the last pitched battle with the Indians
464
00:39:54,887 --> 00:40:02,237
and Eisenhower was born in the year
of their final massacre - 1890 -
465
00:40:02,567 --> 00:40:06,719
which happened on this bare hillside
in South Dakota.
466
00:40:06,887 --> 00:40:12,120
In fact, there could even be people listening
to me now who remember the news of it,
467
00:40:12,167 --> 00:40:16,797
and its curious, poignant name,
"Wounded Knee".
468
00:40:16,967 --> 00:40:20,880
It was the last violent episode
469
00:40:21,287 --> 00:40:26,919
in one of the most constant and certainly the
most miserable themes of the American story.
470
00:40:27,047 --> 00:40:28,685
Let me tell you about it.
471
00:40:28,847 --> 00:40:33,238
After the Civil War, the government
had sent commissioners out west
472
00:40:33,167 --> 00:40:37,206
to sign a final set of treaties
which would confirm and celebrate
473
00:40:37,527 --> 00:40:40,325
the Indians' new trust in the white man.
474
00:40:41,327 --> 00:40:44,797
In fact, they were rounded up
in vast internment camps
475
00:40:44,567 --> 00:40:48,321
which could cover over 1,000 square miles
of arid land.
476
00:40:48,887 --> 00:40:53,836
But these reservations were still too confining
for the nomadic tribes,
477
00:40:53,687 --> 00:40:56,440
and if ever they thought of breaking loose,
478
00:40:56,567 --> 00:40:59,764
the army was on hand to contain them.
479
00:41:03,407 --> 00:41:08,276
By that time, the buffaloes had been slaughtered
and their skins shipped east.
480
00:41:08,407 --> 00:41:10,125
The theory - the hope - was
481
00:41:10,327 --> 00:41:14,161
that the Indians would obediently
troop to the reservations
482
00:41:14,167 --> 00:41:19,116
for their rations of government beef.
If they stayed away, they would starve.
483
00:41:19,407 --> 00:41:23,446
In other words, they were
harmless wards of the government.
484
00:41:24,127 --> 00:41:27,915
Well, in 1876, the country
had a stunning reminder
485
00:41:28,447 --> 00:41:33,123
that some of them were not yet
cowed into a breadline.
486
00:41:34,727 --> 00:41:36,445
Out of the blue came the news
487
00:41:36,647 --> 00:41:41,163
that one third of the Seventh Cavalry
under the command of General Custer
488
00:41:41,447 --> 00:41:43,836
had been massacred.
489
00:42:28,727 --> 00:42:31,082
In its fury and humiliation,
490
00:42:31,367 --> 00:42:33,756
the army mapped a series of campaigns
491
00:42:33,767 --> 00:42:39,444
to ensure that the Indian would never again
be anything but a reservation prisoner.
492
00:42:39,887 --> 00:42:44,677
Even the great Sitting Bull,
who'd escaped to Canada after Little Bighorn,
493
00:42:44,687 --> 00:42:47,360
was cajoled into coming home.
494
00:42:47,687 --> 00:42:53,080
Late in the '80s, the dejected Indians
were suddenly heartened by news of a saviour.
495
00:42:53,207 --> 00:42:54,879
An Indian John the Baptist
496
00:42:55,127 --> 00:43:01,043
whose disciples came among the tribes and
offered a miraculous regeneration of their pride.
497
00:43:00,887 --> 00:43:03,924
If they performed an ancient spirit dance,
498
00:43:04,367 --> 00:43:08,406
the white man's bullets
would be as harmless as hailstones.
499
00:43:08,567 --> 00:43:13,197
The white man himself would disappear,
and the buffalo would be reborn.
500
00:43:13,847 --> 00:43:18,921
This pathetic ritual was enough
to alert and alarm the military.
501
00:43:23,127 --> 00:43:25,721
Buffalo Bill volunteered to parley.
502
00:43:25,527 --> 00:43:27,358
He had no success,
503
00:43:27,927 --> 00:43:33,445
for the shifty reason that the authorities
had sent him to talk with the wrong men.
504
00:43:34,047 --> 00:43:37,084
The army, in fact, was itching for a showdown.
505
00:43:37,407 --> 00:43:41,082
In autumn 1890,
near the reservation town of Pine Ridge,
506
00:43:41,247 --> 00:43:46,605
the Seventh Cavalry - the regiment chopped up
at the Little Bighorn 14 years before -
507
00:43:46,527 --> 00:43:48,085
mustered for the kill.
508
00:43:48,487 --> 00:43:51,763
This time, they were taking no chances.
509
00:43:53,487 --> 00:43:56,797
Their jumpiness was triggered
by the menacing news
510
00:43:56,847 --> 00:43:59,566
that old Sitting Bull had been shot,
511
00:43:59,727 --> 00:44:04,164
and the Seventh took off
to search out a band of renegade Sioux.
512
00:44:06,927 --> 00:44:11,239
They found them -
over 200 men, women and children.
513
00:44:12,687 --> 00:44:14,962
And annihilated them.
514
00:44:15,207 --> 00:44:19,120
This was the frozen corpse of the chief.
515
00:44:19,287 --> 00:44:23,246
This wretched episode
was known to the white man
516
00:44:23,127 --> 00:44:28,918
as "The Battle of Wounded Knee",
December 29th, 1890.
517
00:44:35,527 --> 00:44:40,317
Next day, the army dug the bodies
from the snow and carted them off.
518
00:44:40,607 --> 00:44:44,043
They buried them in a common grave.
519
00:44:55,487 --> 00:44:57,876
This is that grave.
520
00:44:59,807 --> 00:45:01,604
Well, that was the end of it.
521
00:45:01,727 --> 00:45:03,399
Through three centuries,
522
00:45:03,647 --> 00:45:08,357
there had been good,
even magnanimous relations with the Indians.
523
00:45:08,447 --> 00:45:10,438
But the simple, ruthless fact is
524
00:45:10,367 --> 00:45:15,919
that wherever the Indians had something
that the white man wanted, the Indians lost it
525
00:45:16,127 --> 00:45:20,723
by expulsion, by warfare,
by treaties signed and treaties broken.
526
00:45:20,927 --> 00:45:24,920
After all, the white man wanted North America.
And he took it.
527
00:45:25,247 --> 00:45:28,398
In the end, the Indians
were put on reservations.
528
00:45:28,607 --> 00:45:34,637
The white man banished the Indian to lands
where no white man could possibly survive.
529
00:45:34,847 --> 00:45:37,281
The Indian fooled him. HE survived.
530
00:45:38,367 --> 00:45:43,077
And so, after a fashion, he still does.
531
00:45:50,207 --> 00:45:53,199
(DRUMMING)
532
00:46:36,287 --> 00:46:41,407
Today, the longhorn is a stuffed emblem
in an annual parade.
533
00:46:41,207 --> 00:46:44,517
The independent cowboy of the plains
is a lost ideal
534
00:46:45,047 --> 00:46:48,517
to which city men pay their playful tribute.
535
00:46:48,687 --> 00:46:51,838
(ANNOUNCEMENTS OVER TANNOY)
536
00:47:00,047 --> 00:47:05,360
(COOKE) In many a western town on
the anniversary of the city's founding or naming,
537
00:47:05,807 --> 00:47:09,436
the Western males
go through this skittish ritual.
538
00:47:20,647 --> 00:47:22,638
As for the Indians,
539
00:47:23,047 --> 00:47:28,201
they consent once a year to demonstrate
their own domesticated status.
540
00:47:28,807 --> 00:47:32,117
The women as picturesque dependants.
541
00:47:33,127 --> 00:47:36,483
The men as make-believe warriors.
542
00:47:37,127 --> 00:47:42,679
Imitation pioneers do for show
what their forefathers did for survival.
543
00:47:43,847 --> 00:47:47,635
These cheerful citizens may pretend,
like Huck Finn,
544
00:47:48,047 --> 00:47:51,835
that they have still not been
got by a woman and civilised,
545
00:47:51,887 --> 00:47:55,596
but, like you and me,
they are corralled in towns and suburbs
546
00:47:55,887 --> 00:48:01,166
and tethered by mortgages,
parent-teacher meetings, alimony payments
547
00:48:01,327 --> 00:48:04,763
and the other ties of domestic bliss.