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(man speaking Native American language)
It is a story at the heart of America...
one richer and more surprising than we've been told.
(tribal drumming)
American Experience presents a story
that spans 300 years and a vast continent.
WOMAN: The greatest thing a person can have is the power.
Benegotsi. It's scary.
It is a story of hope...
courage...
and survival.
We were about to be obliterated culturally.
Our spiritual way of life,
our entire way of life, was about to be stamped out.
(roaring)
MAN: Every tribe in this country has a time of horror--
absolute horror-- when they were confronted by this invader.
MAN: What we did to the Southeastern Indians, it's ethnic cleansing.
MAN: It was done to them,
so they did it back...
But better.
MAN: Whatever means and manner we could,
since the Europeans arrived here,
we've had to fight for our survival.
An epic history of America...
(whooping)
seen through Native eyes...
too remarkable...
too inspiring...
to ever forget.
The master of life has appointed this place
for us to light our fires...
And here we shall remain.
(men speaking Nipmuc)
NARRATOR: Almost nothing is known about the most iconic feast
in American history, not even the date.
It happened, most likely, in the late summer of 1621,
a little less than a year after the Wampanoag
saw a small group of strangers land on their shores.
Half these strangers-- men, women and children--
had died of disease, hunger or exposure in their first winter
on the unforgiving edge of North America.
But by the next summer, with the help of the Wampanoag,
the Pilgrims had taken a harvest
sure to sustain the settlement through the next barren season.
And they meant to celebrate their faith
that God had smiled on their endeavor.
Fill up the pot, my child, and fetch some more water.
Mind your step.
More chairs here?
We should have this done in no time.
NARRATOR: As the "thanks giving" began, a group of Wampanoag men,
led by their chief, Massasoit, entered the Plymouth settlement,
not entirely sure of the reception they'd get.
MAN: They're here.
(offers greeting in Nipmuc)
JENNY HALE PULSIPHER: Sometimes the Pilgrims are saying back off
and sometimes I think they bring the Wampanoags closer,
depending on what circumstances are like.
But this is a celebration of their survival,
of their recognition that they probably wouldn't have survived
without the assistance of these Indians.
This is a time clearly when they're welcome.
The governor cannot mean 'em to stay.
NARRATOR: Massasoit and his men had not appeared empty-handed.
They brought five fresh-killed deer,
providing some of the vittles for a celebration
that stretched over the next three days.
MILES STANDISH: Musketeers, make ready!
Musketeers, fire!
(cheering)
NARRATOR: The Wampanoag and the Pilgrims were an unlikely match,
but the two peoples were bound by what they shared:
an urgent need for allies.
The Pilgrims were completely alone in a new world,
separated by thousands of miles of ocean
from friends and family.
The Wampanoag-- badly weakened by rolling epidemics--
lived in fear of rival tribes.
That they found one another in 1621 looked like a boon to each.
NEAL SALISBURY: The Thanksgiving celebration at Plymouth
was certainly an unusual event.
It's not something we see thereafter.
It symbolizes where the relationship stood
as of the fall of 1621.
(laughs)
(speaking Nipmuc):
An.. kan... too... koche?
(laughter)
PILGRIM: Well, I'm glad you're amused, anyway.
(speaking Nipmuc):
PILGRIM: You like it, there?
Bellycheer.
SALISBURY: For the English,
it establishes that they're going to be able to survive
because of the Native Americans.
(laughter)
(yells in excitement)
It looks to be some kind of gambling game.
SALISBURY: There are strong personal relationships, certainly,
going on among the leading political figures on each side
and, for all we know, among other individuals as well.
(laughter)
NARRATOR: For those who followed the Pilgrims across the Atlantic,
the first Thanksgiving would enter into national mythology,
where it remains the bright opening chapter
of the American creation story.
For the Wampanoag, and for Massasoit,
the memory of that day would recede into darker places,
shadowed by betrayal and loss.
JILL LEPORE: It's as if you could take the storybook version
of American history-- the myth of the first Thanksgiving--
and turn it entirely upside down.
Here is this story that's sad, that's sinister
and finally is about cruelty and power.
COLIN CALLOWAY: Looking back, Massasoit would,
on one level have felt he was true to himself,
but on another level he must have regretted what he'd done.
He must have thought, "What if we had taken
a different course of action in dealing with these people?"
NARRATOR: They lived in a place of privilege,
at the edge of a world, where every new day began.
And they called themselves the Wampanoag--
the People of the First Light.
RAE GOULD: Well, think about it: you're here.
You are in the east.
You see the sun rise.
In relation to your world, to what you know,
you are the People of the First Light.
You are the Wampanoag.
NARRATOR: Behind the Wampanoag, the sun's west-moving light
slowly revealed 3,000 miles of human culture
from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
CALLOWAY: Indian people shaped this continent.
They established civilizations here,
societies that had risen-- and in some cases fallen--
long before Europeans arrived.
As you look across the continent at this time,
Shawnees in the Ohio Valley are shaping that area,
building their own societies;
Cherokees in the Southeast;
Sioux in the western Great Lakes reaching out in the plains,
Apaches on the southern plains and in the Southwest.
Everywhere across North America there are communities and tribes
and peoples whose histories are ongoing.
(speaking Nipmuc):
NARRATOR: The confederation of tribes that made up the Wampanoag
was one small network section of the Native web
that spread across North America.
The People of the First Light hugged the coast
of a vast ocean.
To the north were the People of the Big Hill, the Massachusett.
To the west and inland were the Nipmuc,
the People of the Fresh Water.
Then the Mohegan and Pequot, and the Narragansett.
GOULD: Just think of this one big circle,
and everyone speaking different dialects
of an Algonquian language,
but they were mutually intelligible.
So we're all interrelating with each other, marrying, trading,
sharing resources, using resources.
R. DAVID EDMUNDS: It was a community of communities
and they had intermeshed
and had their own agendas, their own political problems,
their own warfare, and their own trade.
There was a rich sort of political interaction
in this region.
TALL OAK: Sometimes everyone gets along and sometimes they don't.
But they resolved the conflicts sometimes with military activity
and sometimes through negotiations.
We had times when we forgave offenses
as part of our tradition, when certain ceremonies were held,
like the Green Corn Festival,
which was held around the harvest time for the corn.
That was a time when you would forgive all the offenses
of different people that you might not have been
on good terms with,
and you would invite them to the ceremony
and they would come and you'd exchange songs and dances.
We continue with that
because we believe everything we have is a gift from the Creator.
NARRATOR: The half-dozen neighboring tribes had achieved
a balance of power, the weaker paying tribute to the stronger.
The Wampanoag had sufficient numbers
to defend their territory against their nearest rivals,
the Narragansett.
And the bounty of the land itself eased inter-tribal tensions.
NARRATOR: The shallows of the ocean and the bays
gave up heaps of shellfish;
inland rivers watered the growing fields,
where the Wampanoag cultivated corn, beans, squash.
The woodlands were filled with game for food and furs
to get them through the cold dark of winter.
In 1615, the land sustained tens of thousands of people.
SALISBURY: The explorers who describe these regions
all describe the Native peoples of New England
living in these very populous villages.
In fact, Champlain, sailing for the French,
decided that they didn't want to colonize New England
because there were too many people here.
NARRATOR: For a hundred years,
alien ships had trolled off the Wampanoag coast,
apparitions on the horizon.
Odd-looking European explorers and fishermen
occasionally came ashore,
but they made scant effort to establish relations.
NARRATOR: The visitors were known to kill Native people,
or to capture and carry away men and women.
But in the century since Columbus,
the Europeans had yet to leave any real footprint
on the Wampanoag shores.
(man speaking Nipmuc)
SALISBURY: In the years 1617 to '19,
an epidemic swept through New England.
We don't know exactly what disease this was,
and some of the reports of symptoms
seem to suggest different diseases.
It's possible that one followed rapidly upon the other.
KAREN KUPPERMAN: A normal epidemic hits a few people
and then other people get sick,
but the first people start getting better.
In this case, everyone gets sick at once.
SALISBURY: A sickness was usually interpreted as an invasion
of hostile spiritual powers.
And the Native people had medicine men,
whom they called "powwows,"
who were experts at countering the spirits of the diseases
with which Native people had experienced.
In this case the powwows were ineffective;
often they were victims themselves.
LISA BROOKS: The way that Native people refer to it
is that the world turned upside down.
LEPORE: A whole village might have two survivors,
and those two survivors were not just like any two people.
They were two people who had seen everyone they know die
miserable, wretched, painful-- excruciatingly painful-- deaths.
LEPORE: So, it's not only that the population was eviscerated,
it's that the survivors were deeply affected
by their experiences,
and vulnerable in ways that are hard for us to imagine--
you know, this sort of post-apocalyptic vulnerability.
NARRATOR: Massasoit had seen nine of every ten of his people perish
of a cause nobody understood;
tiny microbes for which the Native population
had no natural defense,
alien diseases left behind by European sailors.
As the season of death subsided, the Narragansett--
largely spared the ravages of the epidemic--
began a series of raids on Wampanoag villages.
And the beleaguered Wampanoag looked to Massasoit
to lead them into an uncertain future.
EDWARD WINSLOW: I think there's a channel further starboard.
STANDISH: I spy it.
WINSLOW: Not much further now, lads.
STANDISH: Haul away.
Put your backs into it.
Pull, lads, pull!
NARRATOR: In December of 1620, after 66 days at sea
and five uneasy weeks on the northern tip of Cape Cod,
a scraggly cult from England anchored its sailing vessel--
the Mayflower-- off the mainland coast
and sent a small party of men to scout the wooded shores.
STANDISH: Ship oars.
Prepare to set sail.
MAN: That'll keep 'em away.
NARRATOR: Radical religious views had made the Pilgrims unwelcome
and unwanted in England.
They had no home to go back to
if they failed to make one in this new world.
Soon after coming ashore,
the scout party stumbled onto the Wampanoag village of Patuxet.
Miles, it's a village.
JONATHAN PERRY: Prior to the 1600s, Patuxet was a large community
of, it's estimated, well over 2,000 Native people.
In 1618, the sickness reduces the population to almost zero.
Some kind of jewelry.
PERRY: When the English arrive, they find houses fallen to ruin,
fields lying fallow,
human bones bleaching in the sun
that have been scattered by animals.
They attributed this devastation to God looking out
and clearing the way for his chosen people.
I think we've found a home.
MAN: We'll need more wood piled up over here.
NARRATOR: Patuxet had easy access to fresh water,
a decent harbor, and high ground
from which the Pilgrims could defend themselves.
They set their lone cannon on a nearby hill
and christened the village New Plymouth.
The fortifications were hardly sufficient to the task;
the Wampanoag, even in their weakened state,
could have wiped out the visitors with ease;
instead Massasoit sent warriors to keep an eye on the strangers.
TALL OAK: The Pilgrims reported themselves in their journals
that they saw Indians.
And, of course, when they didn't see them,
they thought they saw them
because any time a bush would move
they were sure there was an Indian behind it.
Our people always had to watch.
It was part of survival.
You had to watch anyone, to observe how they were
and to see how they were going to act.
CALLOWAY: When Indian people see the strangers who have arrived
and they've brought with them women and children,
that makes them different
from previous Europeans that they've seen or heard of.
JESSIE LITTLE DOE: In Wampanoag tradition,
if you're thinking about making trouble,
you don't bring your women and you don't bring your children.
So to see folks showing up with women and children,
immediately they're not a threat.
Secondly, they're really, really sickly
and they're starving.
WILLIAM BREWSTER: To you who are troubled, rest with us,
when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven
with his mighty angels, in flame and fire
taking vengeance on them that know not God,
and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We pray always for you,
that our God would count you worthy of this calling...
NARRATOR: The longer the Wampanoag watched,
the more pitiful the strangers appeared.
One hundred and two Pilgrims had made the trip
across the Atlantic.
Midway through that winter,
15 had died of disease or deprivation.
By the end of the winter,
the Pilgrims had buried 45 of their fellow travelers.
Thirteen of the 18 women had died.
But even as their numbers dwindled,
it was clear the strangers were not giving up
and anxiety grew among the Wampanoag.
While many powerful tribal leaders-- or sachems--
argued that it was time to finish off the Pilgrims
before their settlement took hold,
Massasoit counseled patience.
The final decision on handling the strangers would fall to him.
Sachem of the Pokanokets--
one of the groups that made up the Wampanoag confederacy--
he had risen to the leadership of all the Wampanoag,
earning his title, Massasoit.
Massasoit is a classic sort of village chief
or super village chief in the Algonquian world.
He is a man of great respect among his people.
He doesn't have the coercive power
that a European sovereign or a monarch would have.
He is a person who leads by example,
and people have faith in his leadership and his experience.
NARRATOR: Throughout that winter,
Massasoit wrestled with the question
of how to deal with the newcomers.
The chief's first impulse had been to put a curse
on the Pilgrims and watch them die off altogether.
But the weakened Wampanoag needed any friends they could get.
Massasoit was paying steep tribute to the Narragansett,
but he knew his near neighbors had the numbers
to overrun the remaining Wampanoag villages
whenever they chose.
And he was aware that the strangers
came from a nation of wealth and military might.
KAREN KUPPERMAN: During the winter of 1620-21,
Massasoit must have been thinking about the possibilities
of some kind of alliance
because the Pilgrims look pretty manageable,
given the fact that 50% of them are dead
by the end of the first winter.
Massasoit-- and this is an assumption that was made
by Indians all up and down the coast--
would have thought, "This will be good.
"I can have these people here.
"I can get from them the things
"that I want from Europeans and I can control them.
So they'll be an ally and a benefit to me and my people."
This country ain't fit for man or beast.
That's ready now.
MAN: We'll need more wood over here.
(man yells in distance)
PILGRIM: Get the guns!
Stay there.
NARRATOR: In the first days of spring, 1621,
Massasoit sent a small party into the Pilgrim settlement.
Stay back, everyone.
(dog barking)
(speaks Nipmuc) Please.
NARRATOR: The Wampanoag chief and 60 of his men
waited on the far side of a small river;
he refused to enter the village himself
until the Pilgrims agreed to give up a hostage.
The English chose a young man with little to lose.
Edward Winslow was a 25-year-old
whose wife was just days from death.
You're all right, lad.
NARRATOR: Winslow agreed to go as the hostage
and to deliver Governor John Carver's invitation to Massasoit
to enter Plymouth for talks.
WINSLOW: I come from King James...
who welcomes you with love and peace.
(speaking Nipmuc)
The King sees you, my lord, as his friend and ally.
Please, enter our village.
Mr. Carver-- the governor-- would like to speak with you.
Please, we wish to be at peace with you
as our closest neighbors.
(loud metallic clang)
Please.
(trumpeter plays)
(trumpeter and drummer play together)
NARRATOR: Among the men with Massasoit that day
was a Wampanoag who could act as translator.
(speaks Nipmuc)
NARRATOR: Tisquantum, or Squanto, had been kidnapped years earlier
and sold into slavery in Europe.
When he made his way back home,
Squanto could speak a little English
and was familiar with European custom.
(speaks Nipmuc)
My king welcomes you here.
CALLOWAY: This is one of the very first of these treaty encounters
that are going to become such an important part
of Anglo-American relations
with Indian peoples across the continent.
We want to be at peace with you.
We want you to promise that none of your people
will harm any of our people.
(speaks Nipmuc)
Let us agree then that if anyone unjustly attack you,
that we will help you,
and if anyone unjustly attack us,
then you will help us.
NARRATOR: There was cause for joy on both sides.
The Pilgrims had friends to help them navigate
the unfamiliar hardships of their new home.
The Wampanoag had made themselves
the first and favored ally of the new English colony.
JENNY HALE PULSIPHER: There's a very clear sense
that Massasoit understands the entire treaty as reciprocal.
At the very end of the treaty it says if you do these things,
then King James will esteem you his friend and ally.
So it would make very good sense for the Indians
to think this is an alliance,
this is a meeting between friends.
As soon as the treaty is concluded, that very day,
Massasoit says,
"Tomorrow I'll bring my people and we'll plant corn
on the other side of the stream."
So this sense that, "Oh, we're the same people now.
We're going to be sharing everything."
NARRATOR: Over the coming months,
the two peoples made halting moves
towards codifying their alliance.
As a show of friendship,
Massasoit formally ceded the settlers the village of Patuxet
and all the planting land and hunting grounds around it.
In July, Edward Winslow made a 40-mile journey
to Massasoit's village, Pokanoket,
and presented the chief a gift of a copper chain.
The Wampanoag agreed to trade with the English alone
and not the French.
Massasoit would benefit as the facilitator of trade
between the English and other tribes.
A few weeks after Winslow's visit,
the Pilgrims invited the Wampanoag to take part
in their first American thanksgiving.
But what sealed the relationship
was a simple show of personal respect.
In February of 1623,
when a messenger arrived at Plymouth with the news
that Massasoit was desperately ill,
Winslow-- like many Algonquian-- rushed to his side.
(men and women speaking, wailing)
KUPPERMAN: Winslow makes the point that this is what Indians do.
When a friend is sick,
everyone congregates at the friend's bedside.
This is one of those places where Winslow is acting
as he knows Indians expect people to act.
Massasoit.
KUPPERMAN: Edward Winslow is a very interesting man.
He was the second in command in Plymouth
and he's the one who takes it upon himself
to become the principal emissary to Massasoit.
KUPPERMAN: Some Indians had a dual chiefdom system.
That is, they had a overall chief,
who is called the "inside chief,"
who is responsible for the community
and basically stays within the community.
And then there's an "outside chief,"
who is responsible for, essentially,
foreign relations and war.
Winslow is acting as the outside chief.
Please, heavenly Father, watch over your child Massasoit.
Imbue him with your strength of spirit.
NARRATOR: Winslow's medicine was of no particular benefit to Massasoit,
but the chief did recover and Winslow was there,
representing the entire Plymouth colony,
when Massasoit was able to rise again.
NARRATOR: In spite of a growing trust
between Edward Winslow and Massasoit,
the relationship between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag
remained tentative.
The Pilgrims were separatists,
devout Christians who had fled the Old World
for fear its corruptions would darken the Godly light
in which they dwelled.
Corrupting influences lurked everywhere.
She cannot mean to eat this.
NARRATOR: Even Winslow, who found the Wampanoag and other tribes
"trustworthy," "quick of apprehension," and "just,"
fretted about close contact with Indians.
LEPORE: You see at the beginning of the 17th century
this kind of cautious getting to know one another.
As those peoples become more and more dependent on one another
and exchange more and more goods and ideas,
and people-- children, wives, families--
have more and more contact with one another,
in a sense, the two peoples come to share a great deal.
The English come to be more like Indians in many ways.
They dress more like Indians; they use Indian words.
They're familiar with Indian ways.
And the Indians come to be more like English.
A lot of Indians speak English; they wear English clothes;
they build houses that are English.
There's a reciprocity of exchange
that actually turns out...
we might think, "Oh, how lovely.
What a nice multicultural fest that is."
But actually it makes everyone very, very nervous.
NARRATOR: The Pilgrims were especially wary;
they were badly outnumbered and many Indians, they believed,
bore the English "an inveterate malice."
They also knew Massasoit hadn't the power to shield them
from every danger.
So, in the spring of 1623,
after hearing rumors of a planned attack
by Massachusett Indians to the north,
the Pilgrims-- under their militia leader Miles Standish--
made a deadly preemptive raid
and returned to Plymouth with an object lesson
to those who would cross them.
STANDISH: Gentlemen, here is a proper trophy.
(cheering)
NARRATOR: "This sudden and unexpected execution
has so terrified the Indians," Edward Winslow wrote,
"that many have fled their homes.
Living like this, on the run, many have fallen sick and died."
Shocking and brutal as the raid was,
Massasoit counseled his sachems
to keep up relations with Plymouth.
The Wampanoag were still the favored friends of the English
and the English were surely no threat to their friends.
CALLOWAY: Massasoit is able to keep this peace for a long time,
which suggests that it's not simply his personality
and his command that's doing that.
The nature of Native society means that he is representing
what the majority of his people want to do.
The Indians wanted certain things from the Europeans:
knives, axes, swords and steel drills.
JEAN O'BRIEN: Europeans bring things like metal kettles
that are very useful for Indian people
and Indian people incorporate those goods
into their own cultures
on their own terms and in their own ways.
LISA BROOKS: For Native people,
trade is about binding people together
in relationships of reciprocity.
So that was the question.
How do we bring the English
into these relationships of reciprocity?
(speaking Nipmuc)
TALL OAK: We lived right near the shoreline,
and we harvested the quahogs,
which you make the quahog chowder from
and all the other good things.
And then, after you eat the contents, you saved the shell.
We wasted nothing that the Creator gave
because everything was a gift,
and from the shell from the quahog,
the purple spot is what we made the wampum beads from.
All the tribes respected the wampum,
and the value that wampum had
was spiritual more so than material.
We used it in ceremony; it sealed agreements;
it was what notarized a transaction.
When wampum was exchanged,
no one would break the agreement that went along with the wampum,
be it marriage agreement or a treaty or whatever,
because it was so sacred,
and you don't go against the Creator.
EDMUNDS: Initially the Europeans then will say,
"Well, this must be like silver or gold.
"This is something that Indian people will use
and trade back and forth."
So they accepted it initially as well, and wampum is seen
as Native American currency by the English.
NARRATOR: European traders,
long familiar with a money economy,
set in motion a system
for exchanging hard goods for wampum,
making the Indian's traditional ceremonial amulet
the coin of the American realm.
Trade flourished under this ingenious new system.
English merchants eagerly awaited Indian furs
from the New World;
the beaver hat was the fashionable new accessory
on the streets of London.
And the arrival at Plymouth of product-laden ships
from England was happy news to all.
With the import of steel drills,
Native tribes could greatly speed the manufacture of wampum.
KUPPERMAN: It's much easier to create a wampum shell,
to drill that hole through the center,
with a steel drill than with a stone drill,
and so suddenly there's a large supply of wampum.
And what this means is
that tribes in the interior
who previously had very little access to wampum
now are able to get it,
and they're also groups that have furs and other things
to trade to the Europeans.
DANIEL K. RICHTER: Plymouth colonists rely on Massasoit
to begin brokering connections with other Native groups.
So Massasoit becomes
this very important node in these regional exchanges
among furs and European goods and wampum,
all of which are being exchanged many times in different groups
depending on who has what.
NARRATOR: With the Pilgrims integrated into the web of his alliances,
Massasoit's gamble-- welcoming the strangers--
seemed to have paid handsome dividends.
RICHTER: I think he would have looked back over the previous decade
and thought that he had done some pretty good work.
It must have seemed possible to Wampanoags
and to other Native groups in southern New England
to envision a future in which English and Native communities
could live profitably together.
NARRATOR: In the spring of 1630,
a fleet of ships, led by the Arabella,
appeared off the coast to the north of Plymouth
carrying a thousand new immigrants.
While the Pilgrims had been escaping Europe,
these Puritans meant to re-create
a new and more pious England in America.
They had embarked from England with a grant from their king
to establish the Massachusetts Bay colony
and with a boundless sense of mission.
EDMUNDS: In Europe at this time,
and particularly among the Christian kingdoms of Europe,
there was this belief in the right to go out
and usurp land that was not occupied by Christian people.
And this... there was a religious basis for this--
as well as political--
in that this was a God-ordained practice
in which one would be spreading Christianity
and would be spreading European civilization,
and there was a moral obligation to do so.
NARRATOR: On board the Arabella, days before it landed,
the future governor of the new Massachusetts Bay colony,
John Winthrop, essayed the epic vision.
"The Lord shall make us a praise and glory,
"for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.
The eyes of all people are upon us."
The Puritans washed into Massachusetts Bay
by the thousands in the next five years,
establishing town after town,
their path cleared by new waves of small pox
hitting tribes in New England.
TALL OAK: One of the historians of the Puritans--
I'm quite sure it was one of the clergymen-- said,
in reference to the death of so many
of the Massachusetts people, that,
"The land was almost cleared of those pernicious creatures,
so as to make way for a better growth."
Now he's talking about women, children, all of that,
but that's the way they related because their unfounded notion
of European superiority.
They kept coming, one boatload after another.
BROOKS: You have all of these people who are coming over from England
with that sense of entitlement.
They have this image of the colonies
as if there's just great space for them to occupy
and there are great resources that are for the taking.
NARRATOR: In less than a generation,
Massasoit saw the English population
surrounding the Wampanoag rise from 300 to 20,000.
KUPPERMAN: The animals that the English bring with them
are incredibly devastating
because they just let them run loose.
The pigs in particular had apparently
no natural enemies here.
They would talk about, you know, innumerable numbers of pigs
just vacuuming up the acorns
and the other things on which Native people relied for food
and on which these animals
that the Native people were accustomed to hunt relied for food.
(pigs squealing)
(yelling in Nipmuc)
RICHTER: The population of the English colonies
was growing dramatically
with an increasing demand to establish new towns,
create farms and expand.
The one thing that Native people have
that the English people want is their land.
CALLOWAY: Access to and acquisition of this so-called "free land"
that the Americas offer is a source of constant
and recurrent conflict with Indian people.
The English came from a society where land was in short supply.
Ownership of land was a mark of status
as well as a source of wealth.
For Indian people, land is homeland.
You are rooted to it
by generations of living on the land;
your identity is tied up in it.
It's not a commodity to be bought and sold.
NARRATOR: Massasoit had not felt pressured to sell land
for the first 20 years of Plymouth's existence,
and his first commitments to cede territory
had seemed harmless.
But just as the English became more aggressively acquisitive,
Massasoit found himself in a weak bargaining position.
The beaver population was badly depleted,
collapsing the trade on which his relationship
with the Pilgrims had been built;
and the English no longer needed Massasoit's help
in expanding their commercial reach.
So he was forced to bend to his ally's desire to have his land.
The chief got what he could for the Wampanoag land.
He sold one parcel for ten fathom of beads and a coat.
As time went on he asked for more: hatchets, hoes, knives,
iron kettles, moose skins, matchlock muskets,
yards of cotton and pounds of English coin.
PULSIPHER: There are several incidents
where Massasoit's clearly disgruntled
with the way things are changing.
For instance, he agrees to sell some of his land
to some of the settlers down in Rhode Island.
And they pay him for it and he says,
"This is... this is nowhere near enough."
And he gives it back.
And they refuse to take it.
They refuse to take the gifts... the payment back.
And they say, you know, "You can't return this
"and this is a done deal.
This land is now ours."
NARRATOR: The English were in a race to establish empire
in the Americas,
jockeying for territory with the French, the Spanish,
the Swedish, the Dutch.
KUPPERMAN: They're very expansive, and they don't expand incrementally.
They're aware that the Connecticut River
is a major conduit of trade.
The Dutch are already on the lower end of the river
and so clearly they want to control the Connecticut River
from its midsection.
With the influx of English people in the 1630s,
Puritan New England ceases to be weak and vulnerable
and now becomes a power in the region.
As they look further west, they see another major power.
The English identify the Pequot
as an obstacle to their expansion.
NARRATOR: In the spring of 1637,
Massasoit received word that a force,
led by Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies,
had destroyed the Pequot,
the most powerful Indian confederacy in the area.
In the final battle, English soldiers--
to the horror of their Indian allies--
had burned an undefended village, killing hundreds.
O'BRIEN: The Pequot War established in Indian minds
the potential savagery of the English.
The idea of 700 people-- men, women and children--
perishing in the burning of a fort
was incomprehensible to Indians.
It was a cautionary tale that Massasoit did not forget.
NARRATOR: Soon after the destruction of the Pequot,
Massasoit traveled to Massachusetts Bay Colony
to deliver to its governor, John Winthrop,
a gift of 16 beaver skins
and to restate his long-standing friendship
with the colonists,
all in hopes that they would continue to honor
the promise of shared security
the English had made in that first, long-ago treaty.
PULSIPHER: Massasoit hopes that this tribute
is going to solidify his friendship with Massachusetts
because he's worried, and he's not the only one.
Winthrop writes in his journal that after the Pequot War,
dozens of Indian groups in the area come to Massachusetts
to the court and try to make friends--
say, you know, "We want to be your friends, your partners,
your subjects," whatever it takes.
They're frightened.
(children laughing)
NARRATOR: Massasoit's eventual heir-- his second son--
was born around the time of the Pequot War
and nearly 20 years after the arrival of the Pilgrims.
He knew no world but the one in which English and Wampanoag
lived together.
Even his names would suggest a man comfortable in two cultures;
he was first called Metacom, and later Philip.
He came of age in the 1650s,
in a world his forefathers could not have imagined.
He fancied fine English lacework and richly detailed wampum.
He was one of the few Wampanoag who kept pigs.
And he counted among his close friends
both Indians and Englishmen.
He was described by an English traveler
as walking through the streets of Boston
decked out in massive amounts of wampum,
showing his wealth and his power,
comfortable walking in this world
that had been created together
by the English and the Native people of the region.
NARRATOR: As he approached manhood,
Philip was more and more aware of his father's growing unease.
Massasoit's tribal borders had receded
in around Narragansett Bay.
Disease continued to thin the Wampanoag.
His trusted ally, Edward Winslow, had died.
The new leadership in Plymouth had little memory of the time
they had needed Massasoit's help.
When do the English lose their sense of openness?
Well, when they become more independent.
When they realize that they no longer need the Indians.
And right around that same time, in the 1650s,
they make one attempt to convert the Indians to Christianity,
which is to say, in effect,
"Well, if you're going to live among us,
"you need to basically become us,
"because we can't live with people
who are different from ourselves."
NARRATOR: In 1651,
Puritan minister John Eliot established a "praying town"
in Natick, Massachusetts.
In Natick, as in the dozen praying towns that followed,
Indians who converted to Christianity
were assured physical security and the promise of eternal life
so long as they agreed to live by moral codes
drawn up by Puritan clergy.
TALL OAK: The praying Indian towns were set up by the English
to basically control Indians.
You had all these rules that were alien in concept,
and Native people had to do everything in the English way;
and everything Indian, of course--
all the traditions that were sacred to your fathers
and your father's father since time immemorial--
you had to reject all that
in favor of following the English way.
So you had to look down on your own people,
essentially, is what it boiled down to.
Wampanoag people here got the idea
that somehow if we are to survive at all,
we've got to at least say that we're assimilated.
We've got to say that we're Christian, whatever that means,
or we're going to be wiped out completely.
In order to be accepted as a full member of the church,
you needed to relate a conversion experience
that was witnessed by the congregation
and that was deemed sufficient that you've been saved,
that you believe yourself to be saved.
We have this remarkable set of documents
that were published at the time called Tears of Repentance
that were Indians from Natick
relating their conversion experiences.
And they were witnessed by a panel of ministers.
MAN (dramatized reading): I heard that Word,
that it is a shame for a man to wear long hair,
and that there was no such custom in the Churches;
at first I thought I loved not long hair, but I did,
and found it very hard to cut it off;
and then I prayed to God to pardon that sin also.
MAN (dramatized reading): When they said the devil was my god,
I was angry, because I was proud.
I loved to pray to many gods.
Then, going to your house, I more desired to hear of God.
Then I was angry with myself and loathed myself
and thought God will not forgive my sins.
MAN (dramatized reading): I see God is still angry with me for all my sins
and He hath afflicted me by the death of three of my children,
and I fear God is still angry because great are my sins,
and I fear lest my children be not gone to Heaven.
The English missionaries demanded from Indian people
much more than an expressed belief in their god.
It was part of an English cultural assault,
which Massasoit must have seen was tearing apart
many Native communities.
And I think that's why
he wants to try and curb the missionaries,
try and stop this kind of assault taking place.
(whooping)
NARRATOR: As Massasoit's days drew down,
he made a point of stipulating in land deeds
that Christian missionaries stay out
of what remained of Wampanoag territory.
(singing)
(cheering)
(speaking Nipmuc)
NARRATOR: Having watched the English erode his tribe's landholdings
and his father's authority,
Philip determined to make a marriage of power.
He wed a woman who was a leader in her own right,
the daughter of a chief who had opposed Massasoit's alliance
with the English from the beginning.
CALLOWAY: Massasoit must have wondered what kind of world
he was handing on to his sons, to his children.
I think there's a certain resignation
in some of his actions toward the end of his life,
an attempt to stem the tide of English assault on Indian land,
on Indian culture, on Indian sovereignty,
and a lingering hope that maybe things will still work out okay,
maybe there can still be peace,
because I think that was his vision
of what New England would be, was a vision of peace.
NARRATOR: Massasoit died in the early 1660s,
40 years after his first alliance with the Pilgrims.
His passing came just as a new hard-edged generation
of English leaders was rising to power--
men like Josiah Winslow, Edward's son,
who was intent on hastening the final reckoning
between the Wampanoag and the English.
Philip, just 24 years old,
took his father's place as the Wampanoag chief.
JONATHAN PERRY: And suddenly it's all on him.
He was leading in a very difficult
and very dangerous time,
where essentially every part of our society
was being stripped away.
RICHTER: The wampum trade was declining; the fur trade was declining.
The demand for the English
to acquire more and more Algonquian land was increasing.
More and more Native people, for whatever reason,
were choosing to move to praying towns.
The world that had created Philip
was collapsing around him.
NARRATOR: Philip hoped to strike a delicate balance,
maintaining his alliances among the English
while also maintaining what remained
of Wampanoag sovereignty.
He continued to abide by the terms of his father's treaty.
But like his father, he rejected repeated efforts
by Puritan missionaries to convert him.
"If I became a praying sachem, I shall be a poor and weak one,"
he said, "and easily trod upon by others."
He also declared a moratorium on land sales.
English authorities had little interest in humoring
the young Wampanoag chief.
O'BRIEN: There were a variety of ways
that English claimed possession of Indian lands--
everything from just seizing them
and then attending to the legalities much later;
merely occupying lands that they want to declare vacant
and thus available for the taking;
and one that is, I think, often overlooked
is that the English would get Indians indebted.
As Indians continued to experience ill health
and epidemic disease,
one of the things they become indebted for
is health care that's being provided by English guardians.
These English guardians used this as a way
to get their hands on Indian land.
So that once the debts have been accumulated,
they go to the Indian estate for the land for payment.
And this becomes a massive mechanism
of Indian dispossession.
What people felt for millennia--
"This is my land, and my land is me, and I am it,"
obviously, because we come from it, and we eat from it,
and things die, they go into the land,
and we eat from what grows from there.
So when we say land-- ahh-key, it's just ahh-key-- land.
But if you say "my land," you have to say na-tahh-keem.
This means that "I am physically the land,
and the land is physically me."
And after Europeans were here for about 70 years,
people started to write na-tahh-key, which is so sad,
because that means
"I am not necessarily part of the land anymore"--
my land can be separated from my person.
EDMUNDS: There is a continual erosion
of tribal people's ability to maintain control
over their own lives.
And I think by the 1660s,
Philip finds himself up against the wall.
In other words, unless one makes a stand,
the Wampanoag or the tribal people
are going to be completely overrun.
NARRATOR: In 1671, rumors spread
that Philip was growing angry and preparing to act.
Authorities in Plymouth--
Josiah Winslow chief among them--
summoned Philip to account for himself.
LEPORE: Josiah Winslow has no curiosity whatsoever
about these people with whom he's grown up.
He's known them all his life.
He considers them an obstacle.
He considers them untrustworthy.
He wants nothing more than to find a means of provoking a war
that could lead to their extermination.
WINSLOW: You have,
have you not, in recent times,
procured a great and unusual supply of both ammunition
and provisions,
planning an attack on us both here in Taunton
and in other places?
These charges against me are false.
If you have no such designs,
have your men hand over their weapons.
TALL OAK: He had two choices: either give all the weapons up
or acknowledge to the English
that he was preparing for war, as they were accusing him of.
So he had to choose the lesser of the two evils.
(men conversing angrily)
NARRATOR: Before taking his leave,
Philip was made to sign a confession
in which he admitted disloyalty to the English
and promised to turn over
any weapons the Wampanoag had amassed.
RICHTER: This is a real turning point for Philip
in that it's quite clear that the aims now of the English
are not just to gain more and more land,
not just to undercut Native people
economically and spiritually,
but clearly to make Native people their subjects.
EDMUNDS: They no longer are being treated as equals;
they're no longer being treated as allies;
they're being treated essentially
as second-class citizens in their own country.
NARRATOR: Philip was not eager to make a fight with the English.
A war would shred his father's historic alliance
and put his entire tribe in peril.
There were only a thousand Wampanoag remaining,
and nearly half were living in the praying towns.
Philip had few warriors.
But the Wampanoag chief did prepare,
seeking allies among nearby tribes
and quietly buying up firearms.
At home in Mount Hope, with his English friends nearby,
Philip wrestled with the enormity
of a war against Josiah Winslow and Plymouth colony.
He was clearly a person caught in historical forces
that gave him very difficult choices,
and like many Indian leaders
in those situations across the continent,
he must have been weighing the options of peace and war,
he must have been trying to balance conflicting pressures.
NARRATOR: Betrayal forced Philip's hand.
In January 1675,
Philip's personal secretary traveled to Plymouth
to warn Governor Winslow that Philip was arming for war.
Three weeks later, the secretary was dead.
English authorities arrested three of Philip's men,
tried them for the murder and executed them.
For Indian people, of course,
a killing of an Indian by an Indian in Indian country
was something that should have been settled by Indian people.
After that blatant assault on Indian sovereignty,
Philip must have been under incredible pressure
from his warriors to step up and do something about this.
NARRATOR: As whispers of a coming war
spread among the English colonists that following summer,
the deputy governor of Rhode Island
invited Philip to a meeting to offer some friendly advice.
Koonepeam, Philip.
EASTON: We thank you for coming over
to speak with us.
Our business is to try to prevent you from doing wrong.
We have done no wrong.
EASTON: If you start a war against the English,
much blood will be spilt.
A war will bring in all Englishmen,
for we're all under one king.
I urge you to lay down your arms, Philip,
because the English are too strong for you.
Then the English should treat us as we treated the English
when we were too strong for the English.
NARRATOR: Philip's angry young warriors
refused to heed Easton's warning that war with Plymouth
would bring every colony in New England down on their heads.
Days after the conference with Easton,
Philip sent warning from Mount Hope
to an old English friend in nearby Swansea:
it might be best to leave the area.
NARRATOR: When Wampanoag warriors began their rampage,
Philip stood with them,
convincing other aggrieved tribes in the area,
including the Wampanoags' old rival, the Narragansett,
to join their fight against New England,
a fight the English would come to call King Philip's War.
EDMUNDS: This war that breaks out in New England is a major war.
It has a big impact on the societies in New England,
both Native American and white.
By the winter of 1676 or so, to get outside of Boston
for Europeans was a very dangerous prospect.
RICHTER: Native American forces had devastating victories
over the English in the early months of that war,
destroyed large numbers of towns and people and property,
and were very much winning that war
and putting the English on the defensive.
EDMUNDS: The war spread to Connecticut.
The war spread into Rhode Island.
The war spread into eastern New York.
Tribe after tribe after tribe became involved in this.
NARRATOR: English colonists from the outlying villages
fled to bigger towns.
Some simply boarded ships and headed back to Europe.
Alarmists among the English feared
they would all be driven into the sea.
The English look now very differently at Indian people,
even those Indian people who have lived among them,
even those Indian people who have committed
to living a Christian life and are living in the praying towns.
These Indians now come to be regarded as, at the very least,
a potential fifth column--
as people who cannot be trusted,
as people who are liable to turn on you at any time.
NARRATOR: As winter approached,
the colonists banished hundreds of Christian Indians
living in the praying towns-- men, women and children.
They took them on a forced march to the Charles River,
put them in canoes,
and put them on Deer Island in the middle of Boston Harbor,
which at that time of year is a cold, blustery place.
Over 300 or 400 perished from lack of food and exposure,
because they gave them no blankets or food or anything
and just dumped them there.
NARRATOR: The war ground on, month after month,
exacting a terrible price.
25 English towns were destroyed.
More than 2,000 English colonists died.
But the shared danger did unite the colonies,
and they lashed back.
In early 1676, Philip could feel the tide turning,
and then the powerful Mohawks, longtime allies of the English,
made a surprise attack,
killing almost 500 of Philip's men and dooming his confederacy.
(woman sobbing)
A year into the war,
scores of Indian villages had been burned to ash.
5,000 Native people had died.
Hundreds of men, women and children who did survive--
"heathen malefactors," Josiah Winslow called them--
were loaded onto boats, shipped to the West Indies and Europe
and sold into slavery.
(wailing)
Native tribes in southern New England had been crushed
and would never again control their destiny in their homeland.
In the summer of 1676, Philip retreated home
to Mount Hope with his wife and children,
his cause all but lost.
PULSIPHER: It does seem a little unusual
that he would come back to Mount Hope,
because there are so many troops around there
looking for him.
It's like consciously walking into a trap.
LEPORE: When he returns to Mount Hope, he certainly has given up.
He's going there to die.
Rather than a grand, heroic military figure,
he's a more poignant, sad figure,
a person filled with sorrow at the end of his life.
NARRATOR: On August 12, 1676, an English militia unit--
along with a praying Indian named John Alderman--
surprised Philip and his dwindling band of followers.
PERRY: After Philip was shot by Alderman,
they dismembered his body.
The scarred right hand of Philip was given to Alderman
as a trophy of the war.
His parts were strewn about the colonies,
spread to the four corners.
This is a warning to other people, to other Indian people.
This is what the English will...
This is how the English will deal with rebellion,
deal with treason.
And remember that in English eyes, Philip was a traitor,
and this was the punishment meted out
by 17th-century Englishmen to traitors.
NARRATOR: Massasoit's son was dead and scattered,
but the colonists were taking no chances;
they captured Philip's son and heir-- a nine-year-old boy--
and locked him in a jail in Plymouth.
While English authorities deliberated
on whether to sell the boy into slavery or simply murder him,
the Puritans gave thanks to their God.
LEPORE: And the final day of thanksgiving of the war
is the day that Philip's head is marched into Plymouth.
This decapitated head on a pole,
it's erected in the center of town
and is cause for a great celebration.
NARRATOR: They wouldn't take it down, Philip's head.
For two decades, while Philip's son lived in slavery
in the West Indies,
the head was displayed in Plymouth,
a reminder to the Indians about who was in charge,
a reminder to the English
that God continued to smile on their endeavor.
CALLOWAY: It's hard to see how conflict could have been avoided
and how the outcome of that war could have been different.
Looking at the generation before this war,
there is at least a moment where things were different.
Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org