Lawrence to Topeka, Kansas Great American Railroad Journeys


Lawrence to Topeka, Kansas

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I have crossed the Atlantic,

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to ride the railroads of North America

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with my reliable Appleton's guide.

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Published in the late 19th century,

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Appleton's General Guide to North America

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will direct me to all that's novel,

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beautiful,

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memorable

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and striking

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in the United States. THEY CHANT GREETING

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As I journey across this vast continent,

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I'll discover how pioneers and cowboys conquered the west.

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GUNFIRE

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And how the railroads tied this nation together,

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helping to create the global superstate of today.

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The early pioneers made their way across North America

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in wagon trains, but the railroads made possible

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the wholesale settlement of the west.

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I started my journey in St Louis, Missouri,

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then headed to Kansas City.

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From there, I'll forge west across the plains, to lawless Dodge City,

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before arriving in the mountains at Colorado Springs

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and finally, heading south, through New Mexico.

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I'll end in the awe-inspiring

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natural wonder of Arizona's Grand Canyon.

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Today, I'm leaving behind Kansas City, Missouri.

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I'm travelling to the college city of Lawrence, Kansas

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and then on to storm-battered Topeka,

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from where I'll strike out to the wide-open prairie.

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Along the way, I pay homage at the cathedral of basketball...

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-You've got to turn and shoot. There we go, good job.

-Yes!

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..get my hands on a vintage hooter.

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TRAIN TOOTS

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Wow, that was fun!

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'..and head out on the range where the buffalo roam.'

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What fantastic animals, aren't they?

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On my American odyssey,

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I'm continuing to puff westwards, towards the state of Kansas,

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admitted to the Union in 1861.

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By the time of my guide book,

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Kansans had converted this state of prairies and tornadoes

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"into famous wheat and corn fields and immense cattle ranges",

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according to Appleton's.

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But what sort of cultures had blown in on the wind?

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Kansas celebrated its statehood as the United States

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was descending into civil war.

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No stranger to bloodshed, in 1854,

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Kansas territory had been a flashpoint in the nationwide battle

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over slavery, when pro-slavers and abolitionists clashed

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over whether their future state should be slave or free.

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And the town of Lawrence, Kansas was named in honour of an abolitionist,

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Amos A Lawrence.

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I've arrived in Lawrence, which, according to Appleton's,

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even then had 10,000 inhabitants.

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"Located here with over 300 pupils is the Haskell Institute,

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"a United States Indian school."

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"Indian school" - I find those surprising words in a 19th century

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publication, a period that one would think was dominated by shootouts

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and scalpings.

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So far on my journey west,

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Appleton's has proved a useful guide to pioneer settlements and railway

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boomtowns. But I've read little of the people who lived on these lands

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before the arrival of the wagon trains and the railroads.

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When it was founded in 1884,

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Haskell College in Lawrence was one of 60 schools designed to rid

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Native American children of their tribal identity.

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I'm meeting Stephen Prue, part of the Haskell administrative team,

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and a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.

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I was very surprised to find that

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this school was founded in the 19th century. What was its purpose, then?

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Well, it was founded by the United States government

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in partial fulfilment of trust and treaty obligations.

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American Indians at the time were under the War Department,

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many were still considered hostile,

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so the schools' primary job was not only to educate, but to assimilate.

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Kill the Indian, to save the man.

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What was the difference between the culture of the Native American

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and the culture of those who were coming in from Europe?

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Well, I think the people that came in from Europe,

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their focus was on ownership.

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Native American culture views our relationship not only with the earth

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but with each other, in terms of a community,

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and that those resources are here for all to share,

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but not for all to just use for themselves.

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Haskell started with just 22 pupils and, by 1894,

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the number had grown to 606, drawn from 36 different states.

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Many had been forcibly separated from their families and transported

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thousands of miles across the country.

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The regime at Haskell was harsh.

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On arrival, the children were stripped of all traditional clothing

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and tribal belongings.

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They were made to work the fields in preparation for lives as labourers

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and servants and in the schoolroom,

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they were taught white American history.

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What about language?

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They would be disciplined and punished for speaking

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their language, saying their prayers.

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There was even a jail on the campus, where students,

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if they were not following the rules, could be handcuffed,

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brought to the jail and locked and given food and water for the day,

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to correct their behaviour.

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Not until the civil rights movement

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in the 1960s did government educators

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begin to adopt a more enlightened

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approach to the education of these people,

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who President Lyndon B Johnson described as "forgotten Americans".

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In 1993, the Indian school became

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the Haskell Indian Nations University.

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Business student Chris Sindone combines his degree studies

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with American Indian dance performance.

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Would you mind telling me about the regalia you're wearing?

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The regalia, this is a traditional prairie chicken dance outfit.

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The beadwork all comes from different pieces and parts

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of my family. I have porcupine needles that are softened up

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on my roach and I have my eagle feathers and I have our prairie

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chicken pheasant bustle.

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It originates within the Blackfeet community, up in Montana,

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close to the border of Canada.

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At the beginning of the mating season,

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all the male prairie chickens are out there, trying to be

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cocky, you know, they want to impress the best lady out there,

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so they're out there fighting each other to, you know,

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to show their vanity.

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Will you honour me with a display, a performance?

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Absolutely, I'd be honoured.

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Ah.

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I have learned one word which I hope will express my thanks

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and I hope I'm going to say it right. Aho.

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Aho! Thank you, you said it perfectly.

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Haskell is not the only academic institution in Lawrence.

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The University of Kansas, or KU, was founded in 1865.

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Now, it has a student body of almost 25,000,

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making it the largest in the state,

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and it accounts for almost a fifth of Lawrence's population.

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"The state university," says Appleton's,

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"is a large and handsome structure

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"standing upon a bluff called Mt Oread

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"in the south-western part of the city."

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If you are ever asked in a pub quiz what Kansas university is famous for

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and you were to answer "basketball", you would score a slam dunk.

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The Kansas University basketball team is known as the Jayhawks,

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a hybrid of the quarrelsome blue jay and the fighting sparrowhawk.

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It was the name given to those 19th century abolitionists who fought

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to make Kansas a free state.

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'Curtis Marsh is director of the DeBruce Center at the university

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'and a Jayhawks fanatic.'

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-Hello, Curtis.

-Hello, Michael.

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-How are you?

-Good to see you.

-Lovely to see you, as well.

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-May we sit down?

-Of course.

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And we're sitting next to whom?

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This is Dr James Naismith, the inventor of basketball.

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He was in Kansas for 40 years, until his death in 1939,

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and he helped the university create a historic basketball programme.

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Dr Naismith was a Canadian sports coach and chaplain

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who came up with the idea of basketball while working

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with a YMCA training group in Massachusetts.

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Why had he invented the sport in the first place?

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Ah, there was a very cold winter in the north-east.

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He had a great number of athletes at the school that were used to playing

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American football and rugby and they were...

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Quite frankly, they were restless.

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The winter months were just too cold for those outdoor activities, so he

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was challenged to find a sport that they could play inside where perhaps

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they don't beat each other up and tackle each other

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and basketball was created.

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Naismith divided his class of 18 into two teams of 9.

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The object of the game was to lob a ball into a goal fixed high

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on the wall. The only thing available at the time

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was a peach basket.

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Michael, one of the things that we love about this game is that

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the scoring is just astronomical.

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You can have a game where 100 points are scored.

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Not when it was a peach basket because you had to stop the game,

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grab a ladder, head up to the peach basket and take the ball out.

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Well, they created a wonderful improvement,

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which was nothing more than cutting a small hole in the bottom

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of the basket so that a broom handle could pop the ball right out.

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After a few more refinements,

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Naismith arrived at KU in 1898,

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where basketball was wholeheartedly embraced.

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In 2016, the university opened a permanent exhibition

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to honour the great man.

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'I made up some more rules. The most important one was that there should

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'be no running with the ball.'

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Two pages of typescript, with Naismith's signature.

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Give me an idea of how important this document is.

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This document, which as far as we know is the only

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initiating document for a major sport,

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was purchased at auction for 4.3 million

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and it was bought by one former student of the University of Kansas

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and donated to us.

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And now you have it behind glass with electronic paraphernalia.

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This is like the Crown Jewels.

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I think it's the Crown Jewels of basketball, no question.

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# Jayhawks, come on!

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# Jayhawks, here we go!

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# Jayhawks, come on! #

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All the greats have played here in the famous Allen Fieldhouse Stadium.

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And today, there's a new rookie player on the team.

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Right, how do we begin, Coach?

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So, the first thing we're going to do, we're going to get on the block,

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-where it gets real dirty.

-Real dirty? OK, fine.

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What you're going to do is put your back to the basket.

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Yes, and you're going to post up and when you post up,

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-you're going to get physical.

-OK, physical.

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-You're going to get physical.

-Get big.

-All right, get big!

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Go, Michael! Go, Michael!

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-There you go.

-Yeah, there we go.

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Look at that!

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Thanks to the dedication of KU players and coaches,

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basketball soon became a national sport.

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Yeah, that was good, that was good.

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# Michael, Michael... #

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And in 1936, an Olympic one.

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Here we go, get ready. Turn and shoot. Good job! There we go!

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Yeah!

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KU!

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Here we go. We're big on high fives at KU. Yeah!

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Curtis, do you remember coming here to watch games?

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I will never forget it.

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It's what made me a Jayhawk fan.

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What does this place mean to you?

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Next to my family, it's the most important thing in my life.

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The games here are like no other.

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There's so much energy here that it's really like nothing else.

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You'd better get ready now,

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cos you're going to get licked in your own stadium today.

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You got it, Michael.

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# Go, Michael!

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Stop him, stop him!

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It's in!

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Good sport!

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In truth, there are not many passenger trains nowadays

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running in the state of Kansas,

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which is why it's a great joy to find a heritage line running between

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Baldwin City and Ottawa at a very dignified speed.

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Ladies and gentlemen, all aboard!

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All aboard!

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Thank you.

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'After the end of the American Civil War in 1865,

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'the United States government began to speed up settlement of the west

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'by investing in the railroads.'

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At first, settlers hailed the railroads

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as the bringers of prosperity. Many also invested in their

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construction and sought to influence the routes.

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'I'm meeting Kansas historian Virgil Dean,

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'to find out how all that changed when the railroad companies

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'became over-mighty and how the people fought back.'

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Hello, Virgil.

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-Michael.

-Good to see you.

-Good to see you, yes.

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The public got involved in these railroads as investors, did they?

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Exactly, especially if you were in a rural area, just getting started.

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They were vital to a town's success and so towns would

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get into bidding wars over railroads

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just like they do with businesses or corporations, factories now.

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Once the railroads have become a settled part of the landscape,

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how do people feel about them then?

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I think you could say, as some people have,

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that it was kind of a love/hate relationship with the railroads

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from the very beginning. People lost money on them.

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Railroads didn't always live up to their promise.

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They might just decide at the last minute to go this direction,

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instead of this direction, and miss your town,

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or planned town, altogether.

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In the late 19th century,

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numerous privately-owned railroad companies operated in Kansas,

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including the Santa Fe, the Kansas Pacific and the Union Pacific.

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How was it that they affected people's lives?

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Well, they're very important to people,

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but they also see abuses from time to time.

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Most commonly, what you'd hear is that railroads charged too much

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for hauling freight and that the passenger fares were too high.

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By the 1870s, the political corruption,

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which a lot of people tied to the large railroad companies and other

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businesses, but railroads in particular, is a big issue.

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In the 1880s and '90s,

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a combination of drought and competition from overseas

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had left farmers struggling and angry with the wealthy railroads,

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whom they accused of naked greed.

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They formed a political party, the Populists,

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to demand, amongst other things, that the railroads be nationalised.

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So, would it be going too far to say that amongst rural communities,

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anyway, at the end of the 19th century,

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the banks and the railroads have become villains?

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Yeah, that's definitely the case

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when you get to the Populist movement

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during the 1890s, where you have attacks on Wall Street, even,

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railroads and bankers, banks,

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similar to what we have today with the talk about too much

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concentration of wealth and power

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and how much of a corrupting influence that has on society

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in general and individuals.

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'In the end, people power didn't win the day.

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'The railroads stayed in private ownership and the Populist Party

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'petered out.'

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-Thank you very much.

-You're welcome.

-Off to the loco.

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'But on this train, at least, the people are firmly in control.'

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Hello, guys.

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Hello, how you doing?

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Mark, are you a volunteer?

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We are all volunteers.

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What's the impulsion to come and do this volunteer work?

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-Why do you do it?

-I love old machinery.

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-Do you?

-Old cars, trucks.

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I'm a gearhead.

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MICHAEL LAUGHS

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Would you mind if I pulled the hooter?

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You've got to go long, long, short, long.

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OK.

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No traffic over here, are we good?

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Yep!

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Long, long...

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Short...

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..and long.

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TRAIN TOOTS

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Wow, that was fun!

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All right, you got it.

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Travelling through the lush farmland of Kansas at a stately 20mph,

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it's hard to imagine a more peaceful place.

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But the area has its surprises.

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This is Tornado Alley,

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where dry air from the Rockies meets moist air from the Gulf,

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creating more tornadoes than anywhere else in America.

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The weather centre in Topeka gathers vital meteorological information

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and there, I'm meeting Mike Smith,

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one of the country's foremost tornado experts.

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Did you become a tornado expert by following tornadoes around?

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By being a so-called tornado chaser?

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I was one of the very first tornado chasers in 1972,

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while I was attending the University of Oklahoma.

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But that's not how I got interested in tornadoes.

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I got interested in tornadoes when I was five years old and an F5,

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the most intense type of tornado, passed a few blocks to my south.

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When I saw all of the damage the next day,

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the thought went through my mind,

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"Anything that could do this had to be pretty interesting."

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Mike has turned his passion into a business and amongst his clients

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are railroad companies.

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What have you been able to do, then,

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to help the railroads to avoid disaster?

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We tell the railroads in advance where the tornado is going to cross

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the track on a milepost by milepost basis

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and they will stop the trains in that area.

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And do you believe that you have avoided catastrophe?

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Oh, we know we have.

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The railroads tell us that.

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In the case of the Greensburg, Kansas tornado,

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another EF5 tornado back in 2007,

0:20:270:20:30

they were able to keep the trains out of the area

0:20:300:20:34

and the two trains stopped were able to watch the tornado in the darkness

0:20:340:20:39

pass safely in between them, illuminated by lightning.

0:20:390:20:43

This is the first known image of a tornado on the Great Plains,

0:20:450:20:49

taken by a Kansas farmer in 1884.

0:20:490:20:52

Back then, there was no way of predicting where or when

0:20:520:20:56

these forces of nature would strike.

0:20:560:20:59

Nowadays, any dramatic shifts in air pressure and humidity are monitored

0:21:000:21:05

from the weather centre's upper air building.

0:21:050:21:07

Every day, meteorologist Brandon Drake sends two of these balloons

0:21:080:21:12

up into the atmosphere.

0:21:120:21:14

The instruments will send back data,

0:21:140:21:17

which can be used to forecast tornadoes.

0:21:170:21:20

This balloon's going to go up about 35 km.

0:21:200:21:23

Once it does that, it'll pop and it'll fall back down with

0:21:230:21:26

the instrument attached, still.

0:21:260:21:27

This thing will take a profile of the atmosphere

0:21:270:21:30

roughly above this location.

0:21:300:21:32

-May I watch the launch?

-You may.

0:21:320:21:34

On the Great Plains, spring is tornado season,

0:21:340:21:39

but they can occur any time.

0:21:390:21:41

Er, don't let go!

0:21:410:21:42

I won't.

0:21:420:21:43

-OK.

-Let me know when you've got it.

0:21:430:21:46

I've got a good grip on it. Wow!

0:21:460:21:48

-OK.

-I must say, this is very distinctly different from holding on

0:21:480:21:51

to a party balloon, isn't it?

0:21:510:21:52

-It is.

-Brandon, ready for lift-off?

0:21:520:21:54

Ready for lift-off, Michael.

0:21:540:21:55

Here goes.

0:21:550:21:56

Yee-hah!

0:21:560:21:58

Whoa, watch it go!

0:22:000:22:01

The Great Plains make up about a third of the whole landmass

0:22:040:22:08

of the United States, but here in the Midwest,

0:22:080:22:11

the climate has created a very particular ecosystem,

0:22:110:22:15

known as tallgrass prairie.

0:22:150:22:16

Hello, Paula.

0:22:160:22:18

Hello!

0:22:180:22:19

Paula Matile is a rancher who heads a conservation project in the Kansas

0:22:190:22:24

Flint Hills. It's the largest area of prairie to survive.

0:22:240:22:28

Paula, how much prairie do you have left here?

0:22:350:22:37

The national preserve is about 11,000 acres.

0:22:370:22:40

And before this was disturbed by the white man,

0:22:400:22:44

how much prairie was there in what we now call the United States?

0:22:440:22:49

Tallgrass prairie once covered about 170 million acres

0:22:490:22:53

and now we're estimating less than 4% of that is still around.

0:22:530:22:58

A rare herd of American buffalo, also called bison,

0:23:020:23:06

roams freely over the whole preserve,

0:23:060:23:08

so we're extremely fortunate to come across them.

0:23:080:23:12

Oh!

0:23:120:23:14

You have to drive very carefully, don't you?

0:23:140:23:17

This is... I never thought I'd ever be this close to a bison.

0:23:170:23:20

What fantastic animals, aren't they?

0:23:200:23:22

Yeah, we reintroduced the bison to the preserve in 2009,

0:23:220:23:27

with 13 head, and we're up to about 100 head, right now.

0:23:270:23:30

They graze differently than cattle, so they leave these little

0:23:300:23:35

micro-habitats for different species of bird.

0:23:350:23:38

The immense treeless horizon of the prairie was shaped by the constant

0:23:390:23:44

grazing of the buffalo and by fires caused by violent electric storms.

0:23:440:23:49

Oh, that is beautiful. That is very, very beautiful.

0:23:500:23:54

This is such an important landscape.

0:23:540:23:56

It's getting developed and it's getting ploughed up

0:23:560:23:59

and it's disappearing right before our eyes

0:23:590:24:02

and the tallgrass prairie is American history.

0:24:020:24:07

This was the American Dream - to be out in the tallgrass prairie

0:24:070:24:12

and to make a living.

0:24:120:24:14

The Kansas prairie has been mythologised in American culture.

0:24:170:24:21

Bye-bye, Paula. Thank you very much.

0:24:210:24:24

One writer in particular fixed the landscape in the public imagination.

0:24:270:24:32

The poet, Walt Whitman.

0:24:320:24:34

Known as America's bard, he was born in New York in 1819,

0:24:350:24:39

but in later life, adopted the persona of a western frontiersman,

0:24:390:24:44

complete with beard and Stetson.

0:24:440:24:46

-Hello, Philip.

-Hello, Michael.

0:24:480:24:50

'Philip Barnard is an English professor

0:24:500:24:52

'at the University of Kansas.'

0:24:520:24:54

Who was Walt Whitman?

0:24:540:24:56

Walt Whitman is one of the greatest of American poets.

0:24:560:24:59

What is the impact that this landscape,

0:24:590:25:01

these prairies, have upon him?

0:25:010:25:03

He idealises the prairies.

0:25:030:25:05

They represent for him a fertile new territory, where a new society

0:25:050:25:10

can be built that's both modern and democratic

0:25:100:25:13

and free from the influences and limitations of the past in his mind.

0:25:130:25:19

A distinctively American society for him.

0:25:190:25:21

What do you mean by that?

0:25:210:25:22

He felt that US culture to the mid-19th century

0:25:220:25:26

was still derivative on its European origins

0:25:260:25:29

and envisioned a more modern, a more egalitarian culture

0:25:290:25:33

linked by railroads and growing in vast spaces, like the prairies.

0:25:330:25:37

Did he write specifically about railroads in his poetry?

0:25:370:25:41

There's a very beautiful poem called To A Locomotive In Winter,

0:25:410:25:44

where he celebrates the railroad and locomotives as engines of modernity.

0:25:440:25:49

"I hear the locomotives rushing

0:25:490:25:51

"and roaring and the shrill steam whistle.

0:25:510:25:54

"I hear the echoes reverberate

0:25:540:25:55

"through the grandest scenery in the world.

0:25:550:25:58

"I cross the Laramie Plains.

0:25:580:26:00

"I note the rocks and grotesque shapes, the buttes.

0:26:000:26:03

"I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren,

0:26:030:26:06

"colourless sage deserts.

0:26:060:26:08

"I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me

0:26:080:26:11

"the great mountains.

0:26:110:26:13

"I see the Wind River and the Wahsatch mountains."

0:26:130:26:15

So, here's a man who celebrates nature, but also the railroad,

0:26:150:26:20

which, after all, is violating the nature.

0:26:200:26:24

For Whitman, the railroad is part of nature.

0:26:240:26:27

It's a modern window onto nature,

0:26:270:26:29

through which one can appreciate nature differently.

0:26:290:26:31

The landscape of the prairie and the expansion of the west continue

0:26:410:26:45

to inspire American artists today.

0:26:450:26:48

The composer Mark O'Connor is one of them.

0:26:480:26:52

This is his beautiful Poem For Carlita.

0:26:520:26:55

In this prairie landscape from which the Native American was brutally

0:27:290:27:33

expelled, the poet Walt Whitman hoped that a distinctively American

0:27:330:27:38

culture would emerge, free from European influence.

0:27:380:27:42

I don't know whether basketball was the sort of thing

0:27:420:27:45

that he had in mind.

0:27:450:27:46

Inevitably, people here would write and paint and think differently,

0:27:460:27:52

looking outwards from what Whitman described

0:27:520:27:55

as the grandest scenery in the world.

0:27:550:27:58

Next time, I discover what life was like in the old Wild West...

0:28:000:28:04

He's got a gun!

0:28:040:28:05

GUNFIRE

0:28:050:28:07

..give my verdict on a Kansas staple...

0:28:070:28:09

Mmm, nice bit of crispness around the crust. Very nice.

0:28:090:28:14

..and hear about the harrowing tragedy at Sand Creek.

0:28:140:28:17

A quote comes to mind.

0:28:170:28:20

"In all atrocities,

0:28:200:28:22

"the only thing necessary for evil to succeed

0:28:220:28:26

"is for good men to do nothing."

0:28:260:28:29

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