Great Plains How the Wild West Was Won with Ray Mears


Great Plains

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Ever since I was a small boy I've been

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fascinated by stories of the Wild West.

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What now?!

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Stories of Cowboys, Indians, wagon trains, and the gold-rush.

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But for me those stories are inseparable

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from the landscapes in which they took place.

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The mountains, the deserts and the Great Plains.

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In this series I'll be discovering

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how the early pioneers conquered

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the mighty mountain ranges and the vast expanses

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of the Great Plains.

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How the homesteaders and cowboys overcame extreme temperatures,

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blizzards and drought.

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And I will be finding out how the plants,

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animals and natural resources of this unknown wilderness

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offered unimaginable wealth

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and opportunities for the new nation.

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These are the Great Plains -

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a vast, flat grassland

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in the heart of North America.

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200 years ago, nearly all of it was covered in prairie

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and there are still places where you can see the Plains

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as they were back then.

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No trees, little water just open space.

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This is a place that experiences extremes,

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extreme heat in the summer

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and extreme cold in the winter

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and the wind is always blowing here.

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An incredible landscape, but a very harsh one.

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To describe this as an ocean of grass is pretty accurate.

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The wild prairie once stretched

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all the way from Canada in the North to Mexico in the south,

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half a million square miles of wild grassland.

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In the early 1800s,

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the Great Plains were virtually unknown to the

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European settlers on the East Coast.

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They were sparsely populated by tribes of Native Americans,

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drawn to the area by the animals that thrived there.

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I'm travelling to the northern reaches of the Great Plains

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in Montana to find out what attracted the native

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Americans here in the first place.

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North American bison, known in America as buffalo.

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The bison were lured here by the prairie grass, their primary

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source of food, and with their huge shaggy coats they're

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perfectly evolved to thrive in this forbidding climate.

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It's lovely to watch.

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The calves are all sat down at the moment.

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There are some very big bulls in that herd,

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massive humps behind their heads.

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Quite a sight.

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Vast herds of these animals once roamed across the Plains.

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There are descriptions of the herds being so long that a fast horseman

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could ride all day and fail to reach from one end of the herd to the other.

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They were certainly a key ingredient in this ecosystem.

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Their grazing didn't harm the landscape,

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their woolly fur carried seeds

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and dispersed them across the landscape.

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They were an integral part of the health of the prairie.

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And they were also absolutely central to the life-way

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of the indigenous people that lived here,

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the Plains Indians.

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This herd is owned and managed

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by the Southern Peigan, part of the Blackfeet nation.

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At the beginning of the Wild West years,

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the Plains Indians had a unique dependency upon

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the buffalo for food, clothing, shelter and even medicine.

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The portable homes, or tepees, of the Plains Indians are one of

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the most evocative icons of the Wild West.

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You can't find a cowboy movie

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without one and they are still used today for ritual ceremonies.

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I've been invited to witness

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one of their most significant events,

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a buffalo hunt.

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Each year the Blackfeet harvest 20 buffalo for meat to be shared

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amongst the tribe.

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A special ceremony is performed beforehand

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to give thanks to the animal.

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We've been given special permission to film

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the first part of the ceremony, but most of it will go unseen.

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THEY CHANT

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Can you see them all running there? Just right on the other side there.

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Just right behind you - a small one, right there.

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Fight looking at it.

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OK, take him in slow.

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-Keep going. Keep going.

-Yep.

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Right there's good.

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That's the heart cavity and lungs.

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This is how I do a deer.

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He's thick there!

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RAY LAUGHS

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Wow, look at the size of that rib.

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So what they are doing is, they cut through the ribs which is

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behind the diaphragm there, that's where all the heart and lungs are.

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They separated the ribs, that left the diaphragm intact,

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holding back the guts, and now they are cutting the guts out.

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But they don't want to spill any of that

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because it would spoil the meat

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and also these pieces all have traditional uses.

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So you've to do this quickly, don't you?

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Because you don't want the meat to spoil.

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Yeah, we're just going to take the kidney,

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liver and cut the lungs away and pretty much everything,

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and open that up and if somebody wants the stomach,

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they can take the stomach, that's a kidney right there.

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This is the sweetest part of the liver right there.

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When we hunt elk and stuff like that

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we cut that part off

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and give it back.

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So you give something back to the environment.

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Yes, always give it back. Put it up high, say like on this log.

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Say a little prayer for good luck.

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Let your shot always be straight.

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Only take what you need. Never more.

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-There's the spleen.

-Yeah.

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-Not bad, though.

-What will you use that for?

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Throw it on the coals.

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Cover it up and let it slow cook and eat it like that.

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Real good.

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In many societies these parts of an animal are discarded.

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Tell me about the hooves and the legs, Rick.

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We could use the tips of the hoof

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for our bells for a dancer

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or for some ceremonies we use them.

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We could take these bones right here

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and use it for our fleshing tools

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so when we're skinning this,

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when you're skinning that, we could take that bone

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and push the meat away, we don't need a knife.

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If we decide to make raw hide out of this, we can make drums out of it.

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We can make rattles from him.

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We can do many things.

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Are you going to blow it up?

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You should have had Ray do it.

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-Ray, do you want to?

-Just show me.

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No, go over and blow it.

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-Is he scared?

-No, no, I'm not scared.

-He has to clean it with his lips.

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They think I'm scared to blow up this thing!

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-Hold it.

-Yeah.

-Put your hand like this.

-Like that?

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What have we got here? This is part of the stomach, isn't it?

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This is how it'll look.

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BLOWING

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So you can blow it up like that. Yep?

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So then once they are like this you, er...just dry them.

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And then you can make bags out of them, like tobacco bags.

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-That's how it ends up?

-Yeah.

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So it can either be for tobacco or just carrying water.

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It's very good. It's really good to see, very good to see this

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and it's all being done in a special way which is really neat.

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'But the ancestors of the Blackfeet

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'didn't have the luxury of 4x4s or rifles.

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'Leo and James invite me to see how they would have hunted buffalo

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'200 years ago with bows and arrows and on horse-back.'

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Horses were introduced to the Plains by the Spanish in the mid 1600s.

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It was a momentous encounter for the Indian tribes who were

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farming on the edges of the Plains.

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They developed phenomenal horsemanship skills.

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Now they could hunt buffalo more easily and more often,

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and follow them wherever they roamed.

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That's pretty good. You enjoyed that, didn't you?

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-You broke your bow!

-I know. First time.

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You were over excited!

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Can you imagine what that was like for your ancestors?

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It had to be pretty amazing for them to kill them,

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to be able to shoot them and kill them right there, hauling ass beside them.

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You make it look easy. But it's quite difficult, isn't it?

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Getting right up beside them, staying beside them like that,

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getting one shot between us, that was the hardest part.

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Well, it was great watching you.

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-I bet you want a drink, don't you?

-Yeah, a shot of water.

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That was really good.

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I'm really impressed and riding bareback as well.

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The Plains Indians turned into nomadic peoples,

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accompanying the migrating buffalo right across the great grasslands.

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In the early 1800s, at the beginning of the Wild West years,

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the Plains Indians had the Great Plains all to themselves.

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But all that was set to change.

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Stories of rich farmland on the west coast of America were brought

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back east by early mountain men and fur trappers.

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By the 1840s,

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a trickle of white emigrants from the eastern seaboard

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started to cross the Great Plains heading for Oregon and California.

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They became known as the pioneers.

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The journey became an annual event with more and more people

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crossing the Plains to make the 2000-mile trek west.

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The route west across America became known as the Oregon Trail,

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but to think of it as one route would be a mistake.

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Think of it instead like this frayed rope.

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On the eastern seaboard you've got the population

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and people are coming literally from every corner.

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In fact some are arriving by boat from overseas.

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They all converge, though, here

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at Independence, Missouri.

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This became the staging post for people heading west.

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And here families would arrive and wait for others to join them.

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When there were sufficient families with the right skills,

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perhaps a doctor, a carpenter, a trail guide,

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and they felt they could travel west safely, they'd set off.

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As they headed west they went across mountains,

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the Plains and then across deserts

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before reaching the west side of the US,

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and there they went their separate ways.

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The central part of the journey across the Plains is fascinating.

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They'd travel 450 miles taking a route that took them

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through some of the driest areas of the Great Plains.

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The reason for that's that there was a river.

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This is the North Platte river.

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And of course rivers mean life

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and that was the case for the settlers too.

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Because this river didn't just give them

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directionally a means of navigating across the prairies,

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it also provided water for the families, for their animals,

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lush grazing and very often flat ground to travel along as well.

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You may wonder why didn't they build boats and go along the river?

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Well, there's one obvious answer to that.

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This river flows west to east. It goes in the wrong direction.

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Whatever, it was a lifeline and they followed it.

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The banks of the River Platte

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guided the steady stream of wagons across the Plains.

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Then in 1849, gold was discovered in California

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and the stream became a flood!

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The Great Plains became the stage for one of the greatest mass

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human migrations in history.

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As many as half a million emigrants

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made their way along the Oregon trail.

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I've caught up with the Oregon Trail on the

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western reaches of the Great Plains, at Guernsey in Wyoming.

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Here the wagons were forced away from the river bed for a few miles.

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It meant that virtually every wagon had to cross a ridge of soft sandstone at exactly the same spot.

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These extraordinary marks in the ground are the ruts

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left by the wheels of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of wagons

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going through, just here.

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And you find them all through this area.

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There's one here.

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When I look at this rut, it looks like a left hand wheel.

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So you have to imagine the wagon cantered right over.

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It gives you some sense of their urgency to get through.

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And, in fact, you can see a cut mark here. It's very faint.

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Quite eroded now.

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Gosh.

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And look at that!

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You can really - you can feel the drama as they're coming through here.

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There would probably be somebody near here looking,

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to make sure that the axle doesn't grind out on that barrier there.

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Inching forwards. "Yes, yes, stop!"

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Maybe trying to chock up the wheel to get through there.

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You really get a sense here of overcrowding, of frustration.

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Imagine if you will, the animals, their hooves slipping if the ground is wet,

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trying to get through here, of a family desperate, children crying.

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Maybe a wheel is shed or an axle is broken and one of the routes

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is temporarily blocked with half of humanity pressing from behind.

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"Get out of the way, we want to go west!"

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You really can feel that here. It's a remarkable place.

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Further west along the Oregon Trail,

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I meet up with wagon master Kim Merchant and his two daughters

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to get a sense of what it must have been like to experience the journey.

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Now we've got this wagon. This is quite large as wagons go.

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I've seen some even narrower than this.

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You've got to take in here all of your possessions.

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Let me think. Your tool kit, maybe some luxuries, not many,

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things you want to take to start your new life.

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But you've got to have in here your food and your medicine

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to take you across the continent.

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There were six to eight people in a family,

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so they would have to bring so many pounds of flour

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and so many pounds of bacon, and so many pounds of salted pork

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or salted beef.

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And they didn't carry canned goods because they were heavy.

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But they did have a process where they dehydrated vegetables

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and made bricks and that's how most people took theirs.

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They dried them and prepared a whole year ahead of time.

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They dried out the vegetables.

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This would be full.

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And that's why along the way, when the animals got weak

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they threw things out, because they were too heavy.

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It was always something like Grandma's organ or Mom's favourite dresser. They just threw it out.

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It was more important to get there than take that stuff.

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Sure. That's the thing that astonishes me.

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These weren't explorers. They're families.

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Just ordinary people, and every age group travelled on these journeys.

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Well, I see your daughters have got the best seats,

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-they have the best seats in the house.

-They do.

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-I think we want to get going.

-OK.

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Come on. Molly! Molly! Get up!

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You can see why the pioneers called their wagons

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prairie schooners in the hope they would sail safely

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to the other side of this great sea of grass.

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With the wagons packed full, incredibly,

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most of the emigrants made the entire 2,000 mile journey on foot!

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The flat landscape meant that when they set up camp

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after a hard day's walk, they were often still within sight of their previous night's campsite.

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So how far would travel in a day, at this pace?

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Probably with the right weather and everything is right,

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animals are well fed, you could travel 12 or 15 miles a day.

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People would have been quite footsore.

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And what about the weather?

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Because they were pretty exposed out here.

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The weather in all the seasons was pretty extreme

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even in the dead of summer, when they'd be approaching this place.

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Thunder storms crop up in the afternoon.

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The wind comes up. And you got canvas there.

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You can have pretty severe hailstorms as the prairie warms up.

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The geology's fascinating, look at that smooth rock there.

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Big piece of granite. That's Independence Rock.

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-That's Independence Rock?

-That's Independence Rock.

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-That's a good sign.

-That's a good sign. We're right on schedule.

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If they made it here by the 4th July at the speed they travelled,

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they could make it over the mountain passes before the snow flew.

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So you had to be here by the 4th July to be certain to get across the mountains.

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Yes, within a day or two.

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You know, that was the kind of rule of thumb, so to speak.

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Well, we're in pretty good shape because it's the 3rd July.

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We're a day ahead of time.

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It really was a time for celebration.

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Some of the ladies would save their last eggs

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and their last pound of sugar to make a pound cake

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and they'd tear the hoards off the sides of the wagons

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to make a long table for all the food to put on.

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And what about music?

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Oh, yeah, music was a part of the wagon camps in the evening.

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Somebody would pull out a fiddle,

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and someone would pull out a guitar,

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maybe a banjo, a mandolin and away they'd go.

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Whoa, let's stop here a second.

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That's what they were waiting for. That's what we've been waiting for.

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If you were on the trail, that would be like coming home.

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And especially after you've travelled, you've been wet,

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you've been cold, you've been sunburnt, you've been thirsty,

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you've been hungry and you've been sick

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and then you finally get to a place where there's some cause for some celebration.

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Well, I think we should make our way down to the shindig.

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I think so too. It's time to celebrate.

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THEY PLAY FOLK MUSIC

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Pioneers on this long and risky journey

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shared the basic human desire to be remembered.

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5,000 of them inscribed their names here using lamp-black,

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oil, axle grease, buffalo grease - anything that could be daubed on the rock

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which became known as "the Great Register of the Desert".

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Very good.

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The elation of reaching the rock on Independence Day

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was quickly forgotten.

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After two months on the trail,

0:22:400:22:42

the pioneers were still only halfway to Oregon or California.

0:22:420:22:48

Now Hollywood would have you think that the biggest threat

0:22:480:22:51

to the people who came down this very trail in their wagons

0:22:510:22:54

was Indian attack - and certainly, that did occasionally happen,

0:22:540:22:58

but it was by far the least of your worries.

0:22:580:23:01

There were a lot of other things that could get you.

0:23:010:23:03

In the baking hot summers, you could die from heatstroke.

0:23:030:23:06

You could be drowned crossing the rivers,

0:23:060:23:09

you could be seriously injured if your wagon turned over

0:23:090:23:11

or an animal bolted or if someone had an accident with firearms,

0:23:110:23:15

that accounted for a lot of deaths.

0:23:150:23:18

Then there were the diseases.

0:23:180:23:19

Every disease of humanity came down this very trail -

0:23:190:23:22

chickenpox, mumps, measles, you name them.

0:23:220:23:25

And the one that was on everybody's lips was cholera -

0:23:250:23:28

that's the one they feared the most.

0:23:280:23:31

It's estimated that 6% of the people who headed west

0:23:310:23:35

died on this very trail.

0:23:350:23:37

That's 20,000 people, buried mostly in simple scrapes along the trail.

0:23:370:23:43

It's staggering to think how many perished on the way.

0:23:430:23:46

100 miles west of Independence Rock, I find a stark reminder

0:23:510:23:56

of the toll this landscape took on those pioneers.

0:23:560:24:01

I find this grave site particularly moving.

0:24:010:24:04

Perhaps it's the isolation in this desolate landscape

0:24:040:24:08

or the fact that it belongs to a young English woman who'd come all the way from Suffolk -

0:24:080:24:14

Charlotte Dansie.

0:24:140:24:16

She died here in her early 30s with her infant whilst in childbirth.

0:24:160:24:21

When she died, her husband dug a grave for her

0:24:240:24:27

and for the infant Joseph.

0:24:270:24:28

It wasn't a coffin, just a chest lid with brass hinges -

0:24:280:24:32

it was the best they could afford, it's all they had with them.

0:24:320:24:35

And her husband laid her to rest with her favourite possession -

0:24:350:24:39

a string of blue glass beads.

0:24:390:24:41

But beyond Charlotte's grave, you can see the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

0:24:460:24:51

For the pioneers who had made it this far,

0:24:510:24:54

they still had a third of their journey to go,

0:24:540:24:57

but at least they had made it across the Great Plains!

0:24:570:25:00

It's a sad fact that just a few years later,

0:25:040:25:07

Charlotte could have made the journey safely.

0:25:070:25:09

In 1869, after six years of frantic construction,

0:25:090:25:14

America's first transcontinental railway was completed.

0:25:140:25:17

The train annihilated concepts of distance and time.

0:25:200:25:24

Once, the continent had taken months to cross,

0:25:240:25:28

but with America's east and west coasts connected by rail,

0:25:280:25:33

those 3,000 miles of mountain, prairie and desert

0:25:330:25:37

could be crossed in under a week.

0:25:370:25:39

This is what would change the West for ever - the railroads.

0:25:410:25:45

With the railroads established, and a lot of propaganda encouraging people to come west,

0:25:450:25:50

there was a flood of humanity into the prairies.

0:25:500:25:55

1.6 million people headed west,

0:25:550:25:59

fired with this thought of the Homestead Act.

0:25:590:26:02

In 1861, the US Government passed the Homestead Act,

0:26:180:26:22

offering 160 acres of free land

0:26:220:26:25

to pretty much anyone willing to farm it.

0:26:250:26:28

The pioneers had seen the plains as a barrier to get across.

0:26:280:26:31

Now, thousands of homesteaders flooded onto them to settle,

0:26:310:26:36

and make a new life here.

0:26:360:26:38

Do you hear that sound? That is the sound of money.

0:26:380:26:42

And of course, this was the homesteaders' vision -

0:26:420:26:45

crops as far as the eye could see.

0:26:450:26:48

When they saw all this grassland, they thought,

0:26:480:26:50

"We can turn that into farmland."

0:26:500:26:51

There was just one problem.

0:26:510:26:53

How do you build a house in a land with no trees?

0:26:530:26:56

Homesteaders weren't wealthy people.

0:26:560:26:58

They couldn't afford to import lumber,

0:26:580:27:01

let alone bricks to build with.

0:27:010:27:03

But of course, necessity is the mother of invention

0:27:030:27:06

and some bright spark said, "Why don't we use the grassland itself?

0:27:060:27:09

"If we cut turf, we can use that as bricks to build buildings."

0:27:090:27:13

And that's exactly what they did.

0:27:130:27:15

It's estimated that there were over one million sod houses

0:27:150:27:18

built all across the prairie.

0:27:180:27:21

This remarkable building is one of the rarest in North America.

0:27:290:27:33

This is a sod house, it was built right at the beginning of the 1880s.

0:27:330:27:38

You can see very clearly, the bricks made of turf.

0:27:380:27:42

There are some roots.

0:27:420:27:43

They found the roots of the prairie grass made for very strong turf bricks.

0:27:430:27:48

They laid them so the roots were facing upwards,

0:27:480:27:51

and they would grow into one another a bit.

0:27:510:27:53

These bricks got the nickname of "Nebraska Marble".

0:27:530:27:56

That's how strong they were.

0:27:560:27:58

The interior of the building is really in a remarkable state of preservation.

0:27:580:28:03

This building was inhabited until 1952.

0:28:040:28:09

Since then, it's been derelict.

0:28:090:28:11

But you can see how well it was taken care of

0:28:110:28:14

in the fact that it's preserved.

0:28:140:28:16

One of the secrets was that a tin roof was put on in later years.

0:28:160:28:21

We have a graphic picture of what life was like in this house.

0:28:210:28:25

A house comprised of two rooms.

0:28:250:28:29

Eight children and three grandchildren were born in this building.

0:28:290:28:35

Can you imagine a family of eight living together in this tiny space?

0:28:350:28:40

The walls were obviously a great home for rodents and birds

0:28:400:28:45

and the children would sometimes find that their socks had been stolen

0:28:450:28:49

by rodents and taken off into the walls, into their nests.

0:28:490:28:53

Before this roof was put on, there was a roof of wood

0:28:530:28:57

covered with heavy black paper and sods on top of that.

0:28:570:29:01

When it rained, sometimes it would leak

0:29:010:29:04

and the father would have to rush out and put soil

0:29:040:29:07

over where the leaks were.

0:29:070:29:09

But there were certain advantages.

0:29:090:29:12

The sod was a wonderful insulator.

0:29:120:29:14

So in the extreme heat of summer,

0:29:140:29:17

the interior of the house was always cool

0:29:170:29:20

and in winter it was remarkably warm.

0:29:200:29:23

It's really atmospheric.

0:29:240:29:26

There is still life in here now, look at that.

0:29:260:29:29

Small communities like this deserted hamlet of Montrose in Nebraska

0:29:510:29:56

began to emerge in the rural interior of the Great Plains.

0:29:560:30:00

I've come here to meet up with Homestead historian Tammi Littrel,

0:30:000:30:04

to find out more about the people who took up the challenge

0:30:040:30:07

of farming this landscape.

0:30:070:30:09

I've got some pictures here that I've put in this scrap book,

0:30:100:30:14

that were taken by Solomon Butcher, an amazing photographer

0:30:140:30:19

who photographed many of these homesteads.

0:30:190:30:22

-It's great that he did.

-Amazing, yes.

0:30:220:30:26

They're quite remarkable. You get a sense of pride in these families.

0:30:260:30:32

What sort of people came out here?

0:30:320:30:35

Well, anyone that was 21 years old could sign up

0:30:350:30:39

as long as they were the head of the household.

0:30:390:30:42

So it could be a single woman or a widowed woman.

0:30:420:30:45

It could be a newly freed slave.

0:30:450:30:48

Usually, they were people that had moved to earlier frontiers.

0:30:480:30:52

They were people that were fairly adventurous, but not always.

0:30:520:30:57

Sometimes they were like a young farmer in a family of eight boys

0:30:570:31:03

and he knew that he was not going to get the family farm back east,

0:31:030:31:06

it was too small,

0:31:060:31:08

and so he had the opportunity to have land for himself.

0:31:080:31:10

You know, to start his own place.

0:31:100:31:13

It would be immigrants in eastern cities that are just jam-packed

0:31:130:31:19

and they're wanting to own their own land.

0:31:190:31:21

Or it would be European immigrants, who were always tenant farmers

0:31:210:31:25

or could not afford to buy the land to start their own farms.

0:31:250:31:28

You'll notice in most of the pictures there are a few things

0:31:280:31:32

that they're very proud of. Watermelons was one thing.

0:31:320:31:36

You see a lot of watermelons and what that is saying is,

0:31:360:31:39

they're taking these photographs to send to their families back in, wherever they came from.

0:31:390:31:45

Because often times, when they moved out here, the separation was permanent,

0:31:450:31:49

they never saw their families again.

0:31:490:31:51

And so, these were photographs to show them, we're in Nebraska,

0:31:510:31:55

we made it, we grew watermelons.

0:31:550:31:58

Then there's this astonishing photograph.

0:31:580:32:00

Now, I'm assuming they must have built a frame house by now

0:32:000:32:03

because it's a very high angle.

0:32:030:32:05

Well, actually what this picture is about is she was so horrified

0:32:050:32:09

to have her family know she lived in a "soddie" - a dirt house -

0:32:090:32:14

that she had Solomon and her husband carry that pump organ

0:32:140:32:18

out into the barn yard and Butcher climbed the windmill

0:32:180:32:22

and got that picture off the top of the windmill.

0:32:220:32:24

So there's the elevated position.

0:32:240:32:27

So she has her possessions she's very proud of,

0:32:270:32:29

the organ, and then in the back ground you see there's pigs,

0:32:290:32:33

cattle and horses and everything that he has

0:32:330:32:36

and different implements, farm implements to show what he's accumulated.

0:32:360:32:40

Really, this country was built on the backs of ordinary people.

0:32:410:32:45

People who came out with a dream in their hearts

0:32:450:32:47

and when they found no trees to build with,

0:32:470:32:50

they literally lifted the turf and made their homes from it.

0:32:500:32:54

Lots of ordinary people. Lots of different cultures.

0:32:540:32:57

So it was a fabric of different people that came here.

0:32:570:33:00

It's the fabric of America.

0:33:000:33:02

And hard work.

0:33:020:33:05

And luck. SHE CHUCKLES

0:33:050:33:07

The new frontier was there for the taking.

0:33:270:33:30

But having made it here,

0:33:300:33:32

the settlers still faced a huge challenge.

0:33:320:33:35

How to farm the virgin prairie?

0:33:350:33:38

Some of them had arrived from Europe with farming experience,

0:33:380:33:42

but the soil and climate, even the grass on the Great Plains,

0:33:420:33:46

were different from anything they'd ever seen before.

0:33:460:33:50

This is short grass prairie - you find that in the most arid areas.

0:33:500:33:55

But there are places on the plains where there's slightly more rainfall

0:33:550:33:59

and there you get the tall grass species.

0:33:590:34:02

And they are recorded as having grown all the way up to chest height

0:34:020:34:07

if you were on horseback.

0:34:070:34:08

It's astonishing.

0:34:080:34:10

But when you look at any grass, really you're just seeing the tip of the iceberg.

0:34:100:34:14

You need to look underground to see what's really going on -

0:34:140:34:17

take a look at this.

0:34:170:34:20

This is a species called switchgrass.

0:34:200:34:24

That is a life-size photograph showing just how extensive the root system is.

0:34:240:34:32

In one square metre on the prairie there can be five miles of roots -

0:34:320:34:38

that's what made the ground so productive

0:34:380:34:41

but it also caused problems -

0:34:410:34:43

the roots were so dense and so tightly packed

0:34:430:34:46

that when farmers attacked them with iron ploughs,

0:34:460:34:49

the ploughs broke and it was only when steel ploughs came into the prairies

0:34:490:34:54

that this land could be turned into farmland.

0:34:540:34:56

For many settlers, the challenges proved too great.

0:34:580:35:00

Up to an estimated 60% of homesteaders

0:35:000:35:04

admitted defeat and returned home.

0:35:040:35:07

But for those who remained, the American dream became a reality,

0:35:080:35:13

and their descendants are still thriving here today.

0:35:130:35:15

I've travelled to Custer County, in Nebraska,

0:35:170:35:20

to meet Kevin Cooksley, who still lives on the land

0:35:200:35:23

where his great-grandfather's sod house once stood.

0:35:230:35:26

So now we're coming up to where the sod house was, aren't we?

0:35:280:35:31

The depression is there.

0:35:310:35:33

You can go right to where the well was.

0:35:330:35:35

The ground actually feels a little harder here,

0:35:350:35:37

because that would have been tamped down.

0:35:370:35:39

It would have been, yes.

0:35:390:35:41

Alex Pirnie, my great-grandfather,

0:35:430:35:46

emigrated here in 1876 from Edinburgh, Scotland.

0:35:460:35:51

Do you have any photographs of him?

0:35:510:35:53

The one that was made famous by Solomon Butcher.

0:35:530:35:58

This would have been Alex Pirnie.

0:35:580:36:00

With the great, big, whiskery moustache. Very impressive.

0:36:000:36:03

Isn't it?

0:36:030:36:04

And in it, you can see the sod house.

0:36:040:36:08

When they were living in that sod house, what was life like?

0:36:080:36:11

There were no trees.

0:36:110:36:12

So when you arrived here, firewood would have been in short supply.

0:36:120:36:17

So you used the dried buffalo chips,

0:36:170:36:21

cow pies, for fuel.

0:36:210:36:24

Once you started growing crops,

0:36:240:36:26

corn primarily, you could burn the corn cobs.

0:36:260:36:31

They must have been incredibly isolated.

0:36:310:36:34

Yes, they were.

0:36:340:36:36

Things that come to mind, you know, you worry about the hostiles,

0:36:360:36:39

you worry about the storms.

0:36:390:36:41

You worry about the poisonous snakes.

0:36:410:36:43

You worry about injury.

0:36:430:36:44

Because where do you go for a doctor?

0:36:440:36:46

Where do you go for medicine?

0:36:460:36:47

-And of course childbirth as well.

-And childbirth, yeah.

0:36:470:36:51

How many...? You go to the old cemeteries

0:36:510:36:52

and look how many headstones have children that died

0:36:520:36:55

when they were one month old, two months old,

0:36:550:36:57

or women that died in childbirth.

0:36:570:37:00

What made him stop here?

0:37:010:37:03

That's a good question, and I've asked myself that,

0:37:030:37:06

and the best answer I've been able to come up with -

0:37:060:37:09

they found a place that reminded them of home.

0:37:090:37:12

I imagine that when Alex got here and he looked around,

0:37:120:37:16

and he got up on this hill, and he's got the creek down below,

0:37:160:37:19

he's 360 degrees visibility all the way around.

0:37:190:37:23

He's high enough he doesn't have to worry about floods.

0:37:230:37:25

He can see the bad weather.

0:37:250:37:27

He can see if there's someone coming -

0:37:270:37:29

he can see them coming.

0:37:290:37:31

And I think he looked round at the hills

0:37:310:37:33

and he thought, "This looks like home too".

0:37:330:37:37

I've been fortunate that I came into possession

0:37:370:37:41

of a couple of his journals,

0:37:410:37:44

and he writes in there in pencil...

0:37:440:37:48

Could you read a little bit?

0:37:480:37:50

Here - 1898, page 86,

0:37:500:37:52

he writes about building this frame house.

0:37:520:37:55

"The first load of lumber was hauled by Alex Pirnie

0:37:550:37:58

"from Berwyn to build the first frame house in this valley.

0:37:580:38:02

"James Short, a coloured man from Westerville,

0:38:020:38:05

"came and built the foundation,

0:38:050:38:08

"but winter came on us very suddenly,

0:38:080:38:10

"and came very cold and stormy,

0:38:100:38:13

"so the foundations stood all winter

0:38:130:38:16

"and the first nail of this house

0:38:160:38:19

"driven on March 2nd, 1899.

0:38:190:38:23

"Then we moved into this new frame house

0:38:230:38:25

"after living 14 years in the old sod house."

0:38:250:38:30

And the frame house, which is still standing,

0:38:300:38:32

how far would he have to bring that lumber?

0:38:320:38:35

He writes in his journal of going to Grand Island, Nebraska,

0:38:350:38:38

to get the lumber to build the house,

0:38:380:38:40

and Grand Island is 90 miles away.

0:38:400:38:43

It would have involved a week-long trip by wagon.

0:38:430:38:47

That's if there were no problems.

0:38:470:38:49

It's amazing. You can really get the sense of his pride

0:38:490:38:51

when he talks about driving the first nail.

0:38:510:38:54

You know, this is a new departure.

0:38:540:38:57

It's a new stage in the family's success.

0:38:570:39:00

And this frame house is almost a town house from San Francisco,

0:39:000:39:05

albeit on a smaller scale.

0:39:050:39:07

It's very grand, isn't it?

0:39:070:39:08

Very grand. I mean, complete with a balcony and a walk-out door,

0:39:080:39:12

so he can step outside and view his kingdom, if you will.

0:39:120:39:20

He had to feel like a man who had arrived.

0:39:200:39:23

As the homesteaders began to settle the plains in earnest,

0:39:230:39:26

the expansion of the railroads continued to pick up steam.

0:39:260:39:30

Farming equipment started to be shipped in by rail,

0:39:320:39:35

helping the homesteaders tame the wild landscape.

0:39:350:39:39

Of course, there were still problems.

0:39:390:39:41

With an average of less than 38cm of rain

0:39:410:39:45

falling on the plains each year,

0:39:450:39:47

finding enough water to expand agriculture was tough.

0:39:470:39:51

But the ever resourceful farmers found a solution to this too.

0:39:520:39:57

Extracting water from hand-dug wells was hard work,

0:39:570:40:01

so they turned to the natural resource

0:40:010:40:03

they had in plenty - the relentless plains wind.

0:40:030:40:08

Windmills like this are a common feature in this landscape.

0:40:080:40:12

It's wonderful technology.

0:40:120:40:14

It's very simple and very effective, and can be long-lasting.

0:40:140:40:18

This pump has been functioning since 1893.

0:40:180:40:22

That, of course, made life so much easier for the homesteaders.

0:40:220:40:26

What they didn't realise, though,

0:40:260:40:27

is that they were tapping into an incredible natural resource -

0:40:270:40:31

the Ogallala Aquifer.

0:40:310:40:33

It's porous rock underground here

0:40:330:40:35

that, like a sponge, holds an enormous amount of water.

0:40:350:40:39

In fact, it spreads under the prairie for an area of eight states.

0:40:390:40:43

The combination of this huge hidden water supply

0:40:450:40:47

and the new windmill technology

0:40:470:40:50

enabled the homesteaders to alter the frontier beyond recognition.

0:40:500:40:54

Incredibly, within one generation,

0:40:540:40:57

the vast prairies had turned almost entirely to farmland.

0:40:570:41:02

The new farms were supported by America's railroad boom.

0:41:020:41:05

By 1890, six huge transcontinental lines straddled the country,

0:41:050:41:11

with hundreds of branch lines connecting isolated communities.

0:41:110:41:15

It opened up new opportunities for trade

0:41:150:41:18

right across the Great Plains.

0:41:180:41:21

Towns like Dodge City developed at the rail heads

0:41:210:41:24

where the tracks ended.

0:41:240:41:26

Saloons, stores, and brothels quickly followed the dollar.

0:41:260:41:31

AUCTIONEER SPEAKS RAPIDLY

0:41:310:41:34

This auction is a lasting legacy of a beef bonanza

0:41:380:41:42

triggered in the mid-1800s.

0:41:420:41:44

Dodge City, originally Fort Dodge,

0:41:440:41:46

was transformed by the railroad's arrival in 1872.

0:41:460:41:51

Now that the local beef could be shipped back

0:41:510:41:53

to the new nation's growing cities in the east,

0:41:530:41:56

demand was enormous.

0:41:560:41:59

39. 85 on 8.

0:41:590:42:01

Thank you.

0:42:010:42:03

Dodge City has to be one of the most iconic towns in the Wild West.

0:42:080:42:14

The original front street burned down in the past.

0:42:140:42:18

Fires were a common problem in frontier towns.

0:42:180:42:20

Today, there's this tourist approximation

0:42:200:42:23

and it gives a really good feel

0:42:230:42:25

of what life would have been like back in the 1800s.

0:42:250:42:28

But what a lot of people don't realise

0:42:280:42:31

is that Dodge City was actually founded

0:42:310:42:33

on one of the saddest stories in the Wild West.

0:42:330:42:36

As the railroad continued advancing east,

0:42:420:42:45

its newly-laid tracks cut right through the migratory path

0:42:450:42:49

of the great southern buffalo herd.

0:42:490:42:51

It sparked a massive - and lucrative -

0:42:510:42:53

trade in buffalo hunting and tanning here in Dodge City.

0:42:530:42:58

Historian Noel Ary explains how the arrival of the train

0:42:580:43:02

would mark the beginning of the end for the buffalo...

0:43:020:43:05

There was a big demand for leather.

0:43:050:43:08

And if you stop to think,

0:43:080:43:10

we didn't have plastic, so furniture,

0:43:100:43:13

harness of all kinds, saddles, coats, rugs,

0:43:130:43:19

and then as the industry began to build,

0:43:190:43:23

they would have one large power plant,

0:43:230:43:25

and long shafts going from that,

0:43:250:43:27

and belts that came down to power all the machinery,

0:43:270:43:30

and they found buffalo hide made a wonderful belt.

0:43:300:43:33

The railroad made it possible to market all of these products

0:43:330:43:38

that they got from the buffalo.

0:43:380:43:40

Buffalo hunters flocked to Dodge City,

0:43:420:43:44

where they could earn up to 3 per hide.

0:43:440:43:47

A really good hunter could shoot up to, if everything was right,

0:43:470:43:51

100 buffalo in a day.

0:43:510:43:53

-100 in a day?

-Uh-huh.

0:43:530:43:55

Horizon to horizon, there were buffalo.

0:43:550:43:58

And so it wasn't hard in the beginning to find buffalo.

0:43:580:44:04

One hunter shot 1,500 buffalo in seven days.

0:44:040:44:08

-1,500 bison?

-1,500 bison in a week.

0:44:080:44:12

There was a lot more people hunting

0:44:120:44:14

than I think a lot of people thought.

0:44:140:44:16

I know just in this immediate area, they estimated 5,000 hunters.

0:44:160:44:20

And, of course, they had good guns.

0:44:200:44:22

This was just after the Civil War,

0:44:220:44:24

and the Sharps rifle is heavy.

0:44:240:44:29

It's 14-16lb.

0:44:290:44:32

And they come in all different calibres,

0:44:320:44:35

and different barrel lengths,

0:44:350:44:39

but they were accurate, and they were well-made.

0:44:390:44:43

And if you had a Sharps, you had the Cadillac of guns at the time.

0:44:430:44:48

And this is a genuine... This is a historical piece?

0:44:480:44:50

Yes, this is an old Sharps.

0:44:500:44:52

I don't know the history behind it.

0:44:520:44:54

It's been awfully well taken care of.

0:44:540:44:56

Most of them don't look that good.

0:44:560:45:00

-It's amazing. A very, very heavy barrel.

-Sure.

0:45:000:45:04

And when they were hunting,

0:45:040:45:07

they tried to get as close as they could to a herd.

0:45:070:45:09

And they'd watch them a little while

0:45:090:45:11

and determine which was the leader,

0:45:110:45:13

which was usually an old cow.

0:45:130:45:15

And they could watch by just how the group was reacting to her.

0:45:150:45:20

That's the one they tried to shoot first.

0:45:200:45:22

If they shot them in the heart, they apparently jumped,

0:45:220:45:26

and caused all kinds of a commotion.

0:45:260:45:28

And that caused the whole group then to run.

0:45:280:45:32

But if they could shoot them in the lungs,

0:45:320:45:35

they would bleed to death pretty fast.

0:45:350:45:38

And what they'd do, they'd stand there a while and bleed,

0:45:380:45:41

and get very sick, and lay down, and that was it.

0:45:410:45:44

The other buffalo might come over and smell them,

0:45:440:45:46

but she didn't leave, and she was the leader,

0:45:460:45:49

so they stayed and continued grazing,

0:45:490:45:52

and the idea was to keep them within rifle range

0:45:520:45:56

as long as they could to kill as many as they could.

0:45:560:45:59

That's fascinating.

0:45:590:46:01

So I've got this impression now of the professional buffalo hunter.

0:46:010:46:04

But it wasn't all like that, was it?

0:46:040:46:06

-There was an element of hunting for sport as well.

-Oh, sure.

0:46:060:46:10

And probably the most famous, or infamous, example of that

0:46:100:46:15

was on the Kansas Pacific railroad to the north,

0:46:150:46:18

the other transcontinental railroad

0:46:180:46:20

that went through about 100 miles north of us.

0:46:200:46:23

And they...

0:46:230:46:24

..touted, advertised, shooting buffalo from the train.

0:46:250:46:29

And if they came to a herd,

0:46:290:46:31

they would simply slow the train away down, and everybody shot.

0:46:310:46:35

And Kansas Pacific did have their own taxidermy department,

0:46:350:46:40

which mounted heads.

0:46:400:46:42

And there was a...

0:46:420:46:44

There's a picture that shows the front of the building

0:46:440:46:47

with a number of heads there.

0:46:470:46:49

And I'm sure it was a PR-type thing.

0:46:490:46:51

It was a lark.

0:46:510:46:53

Going to the Old West was the thing to do.

0:46:530:46:57

Shooting buffalo was part of the trip.

0:46:570:46:59

And the buffalo never had a chance.

0:46:590:47:01

Abandoned buffalo carcasses littered the plains.

0:47:040:47:07

They slowly decayed into giant piles of sun-bleached bones,

0:47:070:47:12

making the prairies so white,

0:47:120:47:14

some said it looked as if it were covered in snow.

0:47:140:47:18

It's estimated that the bones of 31 million buffalo

0:47:220:47:26

were collected up and shipped back east to be ground into fertiliser.

0:47:260:47:31

By the end of the 1800s,

0:47:330:47:36

the great buffalo herds had effectively vanished

0:47:360:47:39

from the Great Plains.

0:47:390:47:41

If you know where to look,

0:47:500:47:52

there are marks across this landscape that tell its history,

0:47:520:47:56

because this depression in the ground is not man-made.

0:47:560:48:00

This was made by buffalo,

0:48:000:48:03

because this was once a wallow.

0:48:030:48:06

It's hard to imagine,

0:48:060:48:07

because there are no buffalo here today.

0:48:070:48:09

In 1800, it's estimated that there were

0:48:090:48:12

between 30 and 60 million buffalo

0:48:120:48:16

roaming wild and free across the prairie.

0:48:160:48:19

By 1895, there were less than 1,000.

0:48:190:48:24

It was inconceivable to the Native Americans

0:48:240:48:27

that the buffalo could have been gone.

0:48:270:48:29

But they were, and for them,

0:48:290:48:31

that had a catastrophic impact on their way of life.

0:48:310:48:35

Without the buffalo,

0:48:390:48:41

the Plains Indians simply could not survive.

0:48:410:48:44

After years of increasing conflict with settlers and the US Army,

0:48:440:48:49

they were forced onto reservations.

0:48:490:48:51

There was now nothing to stand in the way of the frontier

0:48:510:48:54

as it swept west.

0:48:540:48:56

With no buffalo,

0:48:570:48:59

and with the Plains Indians restricted to reservations,

0:48:590:49:02

the prairie grass was now up for grabs.

0:49:020:49:04

It wasn't long before industrious ranchers from the south

0:49:040:49:08

realised this was excellent grazing ground for their cattle.

0:49:080:49:11

CATTLE MOO

0:49:110:49:14

I've come to Moore Ranch,

0:49:140:49:16

a working ranch south-west of Dodge City.

0:49:160:49:19

These are your classic longhorn cattle.

0:49:210:49:23

They're beautiful, aren't they?

0:49:230:49:24

They were originally brought here by the Spanish,

0:49:240:49:27

and farmed by the Mexicans.

0:49:270:49:28

But as the United States established its borders,

0:49:280:49:32

and the Mexicans retreated,

0:49:320:49:33

large herds of these were left in the prairies.

0:49:330:49:37

But it wasn't until the buffalo were wiped out

0:49:370:49:41

that there was really an opportunity for these cattle.

0:49:410:49:44

There was a niche created that they stepped into.

0:49:440:49:47

That, coupled with the fact that during the Civil War

0:49:470:49:50

a lot of the farms were left untended,

0:49:500:49:53

created an opportunity for these animals

0:49:530:49:55

to go feral and really breed up.

0:49:550:49:59

By the time the farmers returned at the end of the Civil War in 1865,

0:49:590:50:04

they found upwards of five million longhorn cattle loose on the plains.

0:50:040:50:09

That would usher in a new era,

0:50:090:50:11

the era of the cattle drive,

0:50:110:50:14

and bring with it that iconic figure of the west -

0:50:140:50:17

the cowboy.

0:50:170:50:19

The ranch is owned by the Moore family,

0:50:230:50:26

third-generation ranchers who come from a long tradition of cowboys.

0:50:260:50:30

Hey, hey, hey!

0:50:320:50:34

Today, Joe has promised me a taste of life in the saddle.

0:50:390:50:43

We'll be driving his cattle to pasture -

0:50:430:50:47

a sort of beginners' version of the great cattle drives of the old west.

0:50:470:50:51

When the stampede starts, you're on your own.

0:50:530:50:56

The 1870s and '80s were the heyday of the cattle drive

0:50:590:51:04

as cowboys drove great herds of cattle north

0:51:040:51:07

across the unfenced plains to railheads in Kansas or Nebraska,

0:51:070:51:12

where they would be transported to market.

0:51:120:51:14

These cattle drives would mean spending

0:51:170:51:20

over three months in the saddle,

0:51:200:51:22

covering distances of up to 2,000 miles.

0:51:220:51:25

Heat, dust, quicksand,

0:51:290:51:32

stampedes, snakes, drought,

0:51:320:51:35

lightning, and dust storms, were everyday problems.

0:51:350:51:39

It's no surprise cattle driving was a young man's sport.

0:51:390:51:43

The average age of a cowboy was 22.

0:51:450:51:48

They worked for a dollar a day.

0:51:480:51:50

The cowboy was really just a hired man on a horse,

0:51:550:51:58

but he captured the imagination of dime novels, and Hollywood.

0:51:580:52:03

Even today. much of that myth lives on.

0:52:030:52:05

Joining me at the campfire is Jim Hoy,

0:52:220:52:25

an expert on cowboy folk life.

0:52:250:52:28

Can you just give me a description of what a cattle drive was?

0:52:280:52:31

Well, it was gathering together a herd of cattle.

0:52:310:52:35

Typical size was between 2,000 and 3,000 cows.

0:52:350:52:38

You'd have ten cowboys.

0:52:380:52:40

Ten drovers could handle

0:52:400:52:41

that number of cattle easily.

0:52:410:52:43

And then you'd have a chuckwagon

0:52:430:52:47

to carry the food - flour, bacon, beans, things like that -

0:52:470:52:51

also any medical supplies.

0:52:510:52:53

You'd gather these together in Texas,

0:52:530:52:55

and they'd start them off.

0:52:550:52:57

Most of them would start in the spring

0:52:570:52:59

as the grass began to get green down there.

0:52:590:53:01

They'd follow the grass north, in a sense.

0:53:010:53:04

First day, they'd drive maybe 20 miles.

0:53:040:53:07

Second day maybe 15, 20 or 25 miles.

0:53:070:53:09

Two reasons - one, get those longhorns far away from home.

0:53:090:53:13

They got a strong homing instinct.

0:53:130:53:15

You don't want them going back where they were.

0:53:150:53:17

Also get them kind of used to the rhythm of the trail.

0:53:170:53:20

If you got them at the very first so they'd handle well,

0:53:200:53:23

and get the rhythm of the trail,

0:53:230:53:25

you could walk 1,000 miles with those cattle.

0:53:250:53:28

They'd weigh more when they got to Kansas than when they left Texas.

0:53:280:53:31

But if they started stampeding the first day or two,

0:53:310:53:34

they might run all the way, and they'd lose weight

0:53:340:53:37

as they did it.

0:53:370:53:38

After you go those first couple of days, you'd slow down.

0:53:380:53:41

15 miles was a big day after that.

0:53:410:53:44

You'd let the cattle graze grass,

0:53:440:53:46

and then you'd put them in camp.

0:53:460:53:48

And they were usually in camp ten hours a night.

0:53:480:53:50

You'd get into the camp, you'd bed the cattle down.

0:53:500:53:53

Leave two cowboys out there to kind of watch them

0:53:530:53:55

and ride around them.

0:53:550:53:56

Then when it got dark, you'd sing or hum

0:53:560:53:58

so the cattle knew you were there.

0:53:580:54:00

And the belief was that it kept them quietened down.

0:54:000:54:03

It was like a lullaby.

0:54:030:54:05

That's fascinating.

0:54:050:54:06

I read somewhere that sometimes

0:54:060:54:08

the cowboys would fall asleep in the saddle.

0:54:080:54:10

They did, they did.

0:54:100:54:12

I mean, if you go,

0:54:120:54:13

and the cattle were stampeding, running, causing trouble,

0:54:130:54:16

you might go two, three, four days without ever getting off your horse -

0:54:160:54:19

or maybe changing horses,

0:54:190:54:21

but not getting a chance to sleep.

0:54:210:54:24

And they would sometimes, when they were out riding night herd

0:54:240:54:27

and they were just dead tired,

0:54:270:54:28

they'd take some of their smoking tobacco and rub it in their eyes,

0:54:280:54:32

and burn their eyes to make them stay awake.

0:54:320:54:34

Wow. Drastic measures.

0:54:340:54:36

And if they had steers that wanted to run and stampede all the time,

0:54:360:54:39

they'd sometimes rope 'em, tie 'em down

0:54:390:54:41

and sew their eyelids closed

0:54:410:54:43

so they couldn't see where they were going

0:54:430:54:45

and kept them from leading the other cattle astray and running.

0:54:450:54:49

Amazing. I've never come across stories of them carrying compasses.

0:54:490:54:53

No.

0:54:530:54:54

At night, when they'd pull into a camp,

0:54:540:54:57

when they're on the trail,

0:54:570:54:59

if there was a moon and stars out,

0:54:590:55:02

the chuckwagon always pointed the tongue towards the North Star,

0:55:020:55:07

so the next day, they'd know which way to go.

0:55:070:55:10

And if there was a foggy day -

0:55:100:55:12

and, you know, you can get lost going in circles pretty easily -

0:55:120:55:15

they'd tie about a 60-80ft lariat rope

0:55:150:55:18

on the axle of that chuckwagon,

0:55:180:55:20

and he could look back every once in a while,

0:55:200:55:22

and if that rope was curving, he knew he was...

0:55:220:55:24

and so he would go back and pull that rope straight,

0:55:240:55:27

and knew he was going north.

0:55:270:55:29

One of the things that fascinates me about the West

0:55:290:55:31

is the way things come and go.

0:55:310:55:33

It really seems like little bursts of gunpowder going off

0:55:330:55:36

left, right, and centre.

0:55:360:55:38

There's a flash of something, and then it dies out.

0:55:380:55:40

So the horse arrives,

0:55:400:55:41

and the Indians go after the buffalo with the horse.

0:55:410:55:44

Then the buffalo is gone.

0:55:440:55:46

And that's the same, true, of a cowboy, isn't it?

0:55:460:55:48

Yeah, in a sense.

0:55:480:55:50

Two major things contributed to that -

0:55:500:55:54

technology and barbed wire.

0:55:540:55:55

The railroad, of course -

0:55:550:55:57

the cowboy was created by the technology of the railroads.

0:55:570:56:01

But that didn't end the open range, barbed wire did.

0:56:010:56:04

1878, it's invented, patented.

0:56:040:56:08

1883, they began to fence up the XIT Ranch in Texas.

0:56:080:56:12

But barbed wire - they could fence off the water holes.

0:56:120:56:16

They could fence off a pasture,

0:56:160:56:18

and if that pasture didn't have water,

0:56:180:56:21

the windmill could provide that water

0:56:210:56:23

as long as there was ground water underneath.

0:56:230:56:25

But that open range era is over by more or less 1890 -

0:56:250:56:31

wide open life with the wide open spaces.

0:56:310:56:34

And when they fenced it,

0:56:340:56:35

it really changed the nature of ranching.

0:56:350:56:38

It changed the nature of the cowboy very quickly.

0:56:380:56:41

If you think of the cowboy,

0:56:410:56:43

it defines America as its folk hero.

0:56:430:56:47

But that open range cowboy - a bare generation of 25 years.

0:56:470:56:53

Yep.

0:56:530:56:54

# Come along, boys,

0:56:560:56:57

# And listen to my tale

0:56:570:56:59

# I'll tell you the troubles of the old Chisholm Trail

0:56:590:57:01

# Come a-ti-yi yippy yippy yay Yippy yay

0:57:010:57:03

# Come a-ti-yi yippy yippy yay

0:57:030:57:05

# Started up the trail October 23rd

0:57:050:57:08

# Started up the trail with the 2U herd

0:57:080:57:10

# Come a-ti, yippy yippy yay Yippy yay. #

0:57:100:57:12

When the Wild West hit the prairies,

0:57:340:57:37

it was like a stampede beyond any human control.

0:57:370:57:41

It burned across this landscape, changing everything.

0:57:410:57:46

By the end of the 1800s,

0:57:460:57:48

you could no longer find dark ribbons of buffalo herds

0:57:480:57:53

flowing across this landscape, followed by Indians.

0:57:530:57:56

They themselves were now confined to reservations.

0:57:560:58:00

Even cowboys were no longer making cattle drives,

0:58:000:58:03

because the landscape had been fenced.

0:58:030:58:06

The wild grasses were replaced now by crops.

0:58:060:58:10

But in a strange way, the landscape shaped the nation.

0:58:110:58:16

And I think that here, in the very heart of America,

0:58:160:58:21

in the adversity and tenacity that was shown,

0:58:210:58:24

the very nature of the American personality was defined.

0:58:240:58:30

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