1 00:00:05,640 --> 00:00:10,880 COWBOY: They shot him in the back. Shot him in the back. 2 00:00:10,960 --> 00:00:14,560 CHELSEA: From a young age I was obsessed with the Wild West. 3 00:00:14,640 --> 00:00:17,240 COWBOY: I'm only gonna tell you once more. 4 00:00:17,320 --> 00:00:20,400 CHELSEA: Stories of dusty streets and the gunslingers, 5 00:00:20,480 --> 00:00:22,320 (gun shuts) 6 00:00:22,400 --> 00:00:23,480 cowboys and Indians, 7 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:28,640 good and bad, rags to riches. 8 00:00:28,720 --> 00:00:31,200 WOMAN: Oh! Oh! Oh, Jim! 9 00:00:31,280 --> 00:00:33,000 CHELSEA: But there are lots of people that have 10 00:00:33,080 --> 00:00:36,680 a stake in this story that are totally ignored. 11 00:00:36,760 --> 00:00:41,080 NARRATOR: What really happened at the Battle of the Little Bighorn? 12 00:00:41,160 --> 00:00:43,760 DR DOUG: We use a crime scene technique. 13 00:00:43,840 --> 00:00:46,520 We use the physical evidence, the forensic science. 14 00:00:52,080 --> 00:00:55,840 ERNIE: I'm one of the last survivors who has a story about this, 15 00:00:55,920 --> 00:00:57,600 and I'm passing it on. 16 00:00:57,680 --> 00:01:01,000 NARRATOR: What can a boat, buried in a Nebraskan field, 17 00:01:01,080 --> 00:01:04,760 reveal about the pioneers who headed West? 18 00:01:04,840 --> 00:01:08,800 DR ANNALIES: This is not a little three by three test excavation. 19 00:01:08,880 --> 00:01:14,600 This is filled with the stuff that made America. 20 00:01:14,680 --> 00:01:17,600 RON: We said it was like Christmas every day. 21 00:01:17,680 --> 00:01:20,880 There wasn't one of anything, there were hundreds of everything. 22 00:01:21,680 --> 00:01:25,280 NARRATOR: And how do the crumbling remain of a ghost town 23 00:01:25,720 --> 00:01:30,640 uncover new truths about life in the Wild West? 24 00:01:30,720 --> 00:01:32,960 CHELSEA: It's time to update the outdated narratives 25 00:01:33,040 --> 00:01:35,440 and to challenge the stereotypes. 26 00:01:35,520 --> 00:01:40,040 The real story is much more interesting than what Hollywood will tell you. 27 00:02:11,120 --> 00:02:20,200 RON: Sam Corbino was a businessman in Omaha, and Jesse Purcell was a pilot, 28 00:02:20,280 --> 00:02:22,880 but they were also treasure hunters. 29 00:02:24,680 --> 00:02:27,480 They took a fluxgate magnetometer 30 00:02:27,560 --> 00:02:31,600 and they started looking in an area of several square miles, 31 00:02:31,680 --> 00:02:35,400 on and surrounding DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge. 32 00:02:39,800 --> 00:02:43,880 Pretty much like a radar, it sends out a signal and if it finds a metallic object, 33 00:02:43,960 --> 00:02:47,040 it sends a signal back to the instrument. 34 00:02:49,080 --> 00:02:53,320 Just a few days later, they found several of these magnetic anomalies. 35 00:02:56,240 --> 00:03:01,200 They knew that they had hit a stash of artefacts of some kind. 36 00:03:01,280 --> 00:03:07,000 NARRATOR: Whatever it is, it lies just half-a-mile from the Missouri River. 37 00:03:12,800 --> 00:03:15,520 RON: This first picture is obviously one of the drilling 38 00:03:15,600 --> 00:03:18,640 rigs where they put down some test holes. 39 00:03:22,320 --> 00:03:26,600 Well, in one of them, up came fragments of boots, 40 00:03:26,680 --> 00:03:29,840 fragments of broken glass, the smell of alcohol. 41 00:03:32,680 --> 00:03:35,880 They had a lotta newspaper people out there all the time. 42 00:03:36,640 --> 00:03:38,520 They obviously were fascinated with the idea 43 00:03:38,600 --> 00:03:41,680 that they had found something pertaining to the frontier 44 00:03:41,760 --> 00:03:44,960 and wanted to know what it was. 45 00:03:48,440 --> 00:03:52,600 They stripped the overburden off as best they could. 46 00:03:52,680 --> 00:03:58,120 The problem was that being below water table, the water wanted to flood the hole. 47 00:04:03,640 --> 00:04:05,240 Water, water everywhere. 48 00:04:07,240 --> 00:04:12,720 I'm a dry land archaeologist and dealing with something like this 49 00:04:12,800 --> 00:04:15,320 is not something I was familiar with. 50 00:04:19,880 --> 00:04:23,880 I was Curator of Collections and Research at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology 51 00:04:23,960 --> 00:04:26,280 at the University of New Mexico. 52 00:04:26,360 --> 00:04:33,520 When I was visited by the guys overseeing the project and they said, 53 00:04:33,600 --> 00:04:36,760 "How would you like a job?" 54 00:04:36,840 --> 00:04:41,360 Well, I was a teaching fellow making $8,000 a year and starving to death, 55 00:04:41,440 --> 00:04:47,880 and that sounded pretty good, because they offered me $11,500, with a promotion. 56 00:04:47,960 --> 00:04:52,080 I was talking to my mother about my new job and she said, 57 00:04:52,160 --> 00:04:54,000 "You don't know anything about that." 58 00:04:54,080 --> 00:04:57,760 And I said, 'No, but I'm going to learn fast.' 59 00:04:57,840 --> 00:05:02,640 NARRATOR: In April 1969, Ron Switzer joins the excavation team 60 00:05:02,720 --> 00:05:05,240 to preserve whatever they find. 61 00:05:06,440 --> 00:05:09,360 RON: Well, that's one of the 500-horse diesel pumps 62 00:05:09,440 --> 00:05:13,360 we were using to pump water outta the ground. 63 00:05:26,360 --> 00:05:29,720 And this was when we finally knew that we had a boat. 64 00:05:32,520 --> 00:05:37,400 NARRATOR: Digging further they look for clues about the type of vessel they found. 65 00:05:41,920 --> 00:05:46,520 RON: The super-structure above the deck was gone, of course, 66 00:05:46,600 --> 00:05:49,600 so all that was left was the deck 67 00:05:49,680 --> 00:05:52,680 and some of the heavy machinery, 68 00:05:52,760 --> 00:05:57,200 spokes that contained paddle wheels, steam boilers. 69 00:06:00,880 --> 00:06:03,200 We pretty much knew that we had a steamboat then. 70 00:06:07,240 --> 00:06:09,000 That's the bow of the boat there. 71 00:06:09,080 --> 00:06:11,000 Yeah, that's the bow. 72 00:06:11,080 --> 00:06:16,800 Over time, the Missouri changed its course and the riverbed became a field. 73 00:06:17,920 --> 00:06:22,560 The boat was found 18ft below water table 74 00:06:22,640 --> 00:06:25,360 in a cut-off meander of the Missouri River. 75 00:06:25,440 --> 00:06:27,960 Essentially, it was just entombed in mud. 76 00:06:30,360 --> 00:06:33,840 So, the problem was, of course, trying to identify it 77 00:06:33,920 --> 00:06:37,440 and we didn't know where it was bound for. 78 00:06:43,560 --> 00:06:47,600 BILL: Between the 1850s and the 1930s, 79 00:06:47,680 --> 00:06:53,160 somewhere around 400 steamboats sank on the Missouri River. 80 00:06:59,360 --> 00:07:04,680 There were quite a few boats that actually sank in this general area. 81 00:07:06,200 --> 00:07:08,760 It was pretty notorious for sinking boats. 82 00:07:16,520 --> 00:07:18,920 So, they really wouldn't know which boat they had found 83 00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:21,560 until they had excavated it and found proof. 84 00:07:28,920 --> 00:07:32,320 Once they finally saw the decking, they had to figure out a way 85 00:07:32,400 --> 00:07:34,360 to get the mud off of it. 86 00:07:35,880 --> 00:07:38,840 RON: If you've never experienced Missouri River mud, 87 00:07:38,920 --> 00:07:40,840 you don't know what mud is. 88 00:07:43,040 --> 00:07:47,360 BILL: They actually found the stern bilge hatch, 89 00:07:47,440 --> 00:07:51,560 so they started pulling artefacts out from there, 90 00:07:54,440 --> 00:08:01,760 and eventually they found a soap crate, and on the top of the crate 91 00:08:01,840 --> 00:08:06,880 had been hand-stenciled, "Stores Bertrand." 92 00:08:08,960 --> 00:08:11,960 RON: And it was brought into the lab and everybody celebrated, 93 00:08:12,040 --> 00:08:15,520 and we knew then that we had the Steamboat Bertrand. 94 00:08:18,960 --> 00:08:21,920 BILL: The Bertrand steams from St. Louis 95 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:25,800 and was headed to Fort Benton into the Montana territory, 96 00:08:25,880 --> 00:08:30,040 and that was the very last outpost at the end of the Missouri River. 97 00:08:30,800 --> 00:08:37,600 We know from the newspaper accounts that at three o'clock on April 1st, 1865, it sank. 98 00:08:39,880 --> 00:08:43,080 The Civil War was just winding down. 99 00:08:43,160 --> 00:08:47,280 Within a few weeks, Abraham Lincoln would be assassinated, 100 00:08:47,360 --> 00:08:51,440 so it was a very turbulent period in American history, 101 00:08:51,520 --> 00:08:55,880 a time of massive territorial expansion and human movement. 102 00:08:57,880 --> 00:09:06,000 RON: When the cargo began to be recovered, we didn't know how much there was, 103 00:09:06,080 --> 00:09:09,800 but there were tens of thousands of artefacts. 104 00:09:10,920 --> 00:09:14,360 So, then we had a new problem. 105 00:09:14,440 --> 00:09:16,320 There was so much of it. 106 00:09:16,400 --> 00:09:20,440 We had to keep them wet, we had to get them into a temperature-controlled 107 00:09:20,520 --> 00:09:24,880 environment if we could, or we were going to lose that cargo. 108 00:09:24,960 --> 00:09:26,800 There was just no question about it. 109 00:09:29,480 --> 00:09:33,440 (music) 110 00:09:33,520 --> 00:09:36,040 Well, this brings back memories. 111 00:09:36,120 --> 00:09:40,320 That's me trying to decide what to do with that cargo 112 00:09:40,400 --> 00:09:42,960 as it came off the boat by the truckload. 113 00:09:45,200 --> 00:09:50,760 NARRATOR: Within nine months, Ron Switzer's team preserve 500,000 artefacts 114 00:09:50,840 --> 00:09:52,760 from the Steamboat Bertrand. 115 00:09:54,120 --> 00:09:58,840 DR ANNALIES: Ron gets so many extra bonus points in my book, 116 00:09:58,920 --> 00:10:01,320 because these steamboat wrecks, 117 00:10:01,400 --> 00:10:04,800 we've excavated so few of them for a reason. 118 00:10:05,800 --> 00:10:09,440 This is not a little three by three test excavation, 119 00:10:09,520 --> 00:10:14,920 this is back hoes, this is, you know, water pumps, this is epic. 120 00:10:15,000 --> 00:10:19,800 You just can't possibly comprehend how much stuff 121 00:10:19,880 --> 00:10:24,200 was loaded on to these steamboats, headed West. 122 00:10:26,640 --> 00:10:30,160 Prior to the Transcontinental Railroad, we really, 123 00:10:30,240 --> 00:10:33,600 really used these interior waterways 124 00:10:33,680 --> 00:10:37,920 as a primary way to move goods and people as efficiently as possible, 125 00:10:39,400 --> 00:10:46,040 and so these steamboat wrecks, they are filled with the stuff that made America. 126 00:10:54,040 --> 00:10:58,800 There weren't a lotta folks that had done much work on the Bertrand after the initial 127 00:10:58,880 --> 00:11:03,760 excavation, and so every time we grab an object now, 128 00:11:03,840 --> 00:11:07,080 we can learn stuff we've never learned before. 129 00:11:10,000 --> 00:11:12,480 Because of Hollywood movies, we tend to think of people 130 00:11:12,560 --> 00:11:18,080 on the frontier as just a bunch of rough and rowdy men. 131 00:11:18,160 --> 00:11:19,760 For me, as an archaeologist, 132 00:11:19,840 --> 00:11:23,720 if I can get to these collections of artefacts coming off this 133 00:11:23,800 --> 00:11:28,800 steamboat, can I use those objects to figure out, you know, why, 134 00:11:28,880 --> 00:11:33,200 why do you pick up and go West? 135 00:11:40,440 --> 00:11:41,840 Hi, Bill! BILL: Hi! How are you doing? 136 00:11:41,920 --> 00:11:43,680 DR ANNALIES: Good! How are you? 137 00:11:43,760 --> 00:11:48,840 I vividly remember the first time I walked into the Bertrand Museum. 138 00:11:48,920 --> 00:11:52,520 I was just blown away. That's exactly how I felt. 139 00:12:00,800 --> 00:12:09,920 The things that always surprise me the most are the real high-end luxury goods. 140 00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:13,960 When were you gonna use that, you know, in the American West? 141 00:12:15,480 --> 00:12:18,200 Imagine this covered in mud. 142 00:12:18,280 --> 00:12:22,000 When it was initially found, they had no idea what the heck is this thing? 143 00:12:22,080 --> 00:12:25,760 It was a mess. It turns out it's a mink stole. 144 00:12:29,880 --> 00:12:31,840 A number of different types of china 145 00:12:31,920 --> 00:12:35,120 or everyday stoneware that was on board the Bertrand, 146 00:12:35,200 --> 00:12:40,080 lovely pieces that, you know, any frontier home would be really, 147 00:12:40,160 --> 00:12:44,880 really pleased to be able to, if guests came over, to put on their table. 148 00:12:44,960 --> 00:12:47,120 RON: The Bertrand had fancy food stuffs; you know? 149 00:12:47,200 --> 00:12:50,520 Pickles and preserves and wines and liquor. 150 00:12:50,600 --> 00:12:53,760 I mean, these were high-class goods going into the frontier. 151 00:12:57,920 --> 00:13:02,280 We had Piper Heidsieck champagne. 152 00:13:02,360 --> 00:13:05,080 We uncorked a bottle of it. It was still good champagne. 153 00:13:05,160 --> 00:13:06,880 (laughs) 154 00:13:08,960 --> 00:13:14,800 BILL: Back in the 1860s, they found gold in Montana territory, 155 00:13:14,880 --> 00:13:18,840 and people were heading West, trying to look for gold 156 00:13:18,920 --> 00:13:21,840 and, if they actually hit it, 157 00:13:21,920 --> 00:13:25,720 hit it rich, they had a lot of disposable income. 158 00:13:26,680 --> 00:13:30,600 People in the Wild West were actually a little more sophisticated 159 00:13:30,680 --> 00:13:33,520 than people think of them as. 160 00:13:40,120 --> 00:13:42,560 RON: Once we got all of the cargo out, 161 00:13:42,640 --> 00:13:46,080 we had to decide what to do about the boat itself. 162 00:13:46,160 --> 00:13:50,000 Were they going to try to preserve it or not? 163 00:13:50,080 --> 00:13:51,880 We couldn't do it. 164 00:13:51,960 --> 00:13:56,880 There was just no way logistically, economically, rationally to do that. 165 00:13:56,960 --> 00:14:00,880 So, they decided then to let the Bertrand go back to her grave. 166 00:14:03,880 --> 00:14:09,520 But before they pulled the plug, we wanted to figure out why she sank, 167 00:14:09,600 --> 00:14:15,880 so measured drawings were made of literally every inch of that boat, 168 00:14:15,960 --> 00:14:20,040 so we could build a reconstructed version of the Steamboat Bertrand. 169 00:14:35,960 --> 00:14:37,160 (laughs) 170 00:14:37,240 --> 00:14:39,160 That's a good job. Beautiful! 171 00:14:43,920 --> 00:14:49,880 She was such a shallow-draft boat, she sat on the water like a duck. 172 00:14:51,880 --> 00:14:55,880 It makes you wonder if there is a clue here as to why she sank. 173 00:15:00,480 --> 00:15:04,680 BILL: It was a very risky business taking a steamboat up the Missouri River. 174 00:15:06,280 --> 00:15:10,920 It was a notoriously difficult river to navigate, it was shallow, 175 00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:15,160 it had lots of sandbars, lots of sunken logs, a lot of snags. 176 00:15:17,000 --> 00:15:19,000 RON: The first boats to reach Fort Benton 177 00:15:19,080 --> 00:15:22,120 on the Upper Missouri in the springtime were 178 00:15:22,200 --> 00:15:25,600 the ones who got the most profit, so naturally 179 00:15:25,680 --> 00:15:29,880 you wanted to get as much cargo up there as fast as you could. 180 00:15:31,720 --> 00:15:37,760 It was common practice in those days to overload your boats. 181 00:15:43,800 --> 00:15:46,760 DR ANNALIES: We learned from the Council Bluffs newspaper account 182 00:15:46,840 --> 00:15:51,640 that another vessel that was a partner with the Bertrand, the Deer Lodge, 183 00:15:51,720 --> 00:15:55,760 actually had to leave about 100 tons of freight 184 00:15:55,840 --> 00:15:59,760 at Sioux City, because the water levels were dropping really fast. 185 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:06,960 So, what that tells us is that literally a few days prior when the Bertrand left, 186 00:16:07,040 --> 00:16:09,960 taking her full cargo with her, she was probably too heavy 187 00:16:10,040 --> 00:16:11,800 for the journey she was making. 188 00:16:13,320 --> 00:16:15,800 She's sitting too low in the water that's not 189 00:16:15,880 --> 00:16:19,640 deep enough for the snags to flow underneath the vessel. 190 00:16:30,440 --> 00:16:36,440 BILL: The newspaper account says it was heading up river towards Montana, 191 00:16:36,520 --> 00:16:41,360 at 3 o'clock on April 1st, 1865, and struck one of these snags 192 00:16:41,440 --> 00:16:44,720 and immediately started taking on water. 193 00:16:47,080 --> 00:16:52,520 The pilot managed to drive it to the western side of the river, 194 00:16:52,600 --> 00:16:55,480 and everyone got off safely. 195 00:16:57,000 --> 00:16:58,560 DR ANNALIES: We know there were passenger boxes 196 00:16:58,640 --> 00:17:02,640 that were left behind inside the hull of the Bertrand, 197 00:17:02,720 --> 00:17:06,400 so can I use those passenger items to figure out 198 00:17:06,480 --> 00:17:09,200 what everyday life was like on the frontier? 199 00:17:12,560 --> 00:17:17,600 I was really, really intrigued to find out who the actual passengers were. 200 00:17:30,880 --> 00:17:32,920 NARRATOR: A hundred years after sinking, 201 00:17:33,000 --> 00:17:35,560 passengers' possessions recovered from the Steamboat 202 00:17:35,640 --> 00:17:40,400 Bertrand are a time capsule of life on the American frontier. 203 00:17:40,480 --> 00:17:44,520 DR ANNALIES: The most intriguing box in the Bertrand collection 204 00:17:44,600 --> 00:17:46,560 held a school slate. 205 00:17:47,720 --> 00:17:51,080 BILL: At the top of the slate is carved the name, "Fannie." 206 00:17:55,680 --> 00:17:57,880 DR ANNALIES: We have learned from the newspaper accounts 207 00:17:57,960 --> 00:18:03,400 that Anna and Fannie Campbell were two young women who are travelling 208 00:18:03,480 --> 00:18:09,800 from boarding school into the Montana territory to meet their family. 209 00:18:11,120 --> 00:18:14,000 Fannie sorta had a larger than life sorta persona, 210 00:18:14,080 --> 00:18:16,520 so she turned up frequently in historical records. 211 00:18:19,040 --> 00:18:23,600 This is basically sorta showing what everybody in the County does, 212 00:18:23,680 --> 00:18:27,760 and under Fannie's entry, it says that she's, "Teaching school." 213 00:18:30,080 --> 00:18:34,560 It says, "Tomorrow, the Tree School will be opened under the direction 214 00:18:34,640 --> 00:18:38,040 and superintendence of Miss. Fannie Campbell, 215 00:18:38,120 --> 00:18:44,640 a lady and a scholar in every manner, calculated to take charge of the youthful mind." 216 00:18:45,400 --> 00:18:49,960 This is an article about when Fannie bought a ranch. 217 00:18:50,040 --> 00:18:54,680 She had horses and cattle, talking about how snug her income must be because 218 00:18:54,760 --> 00:18:59,600 she was such a successful rancher. You gotta love that! 219 00:18:59,680 --> 00:19:10,280 In her fifties she ranched 1,000 acres That's crazy! This is a census from 1910. 220 00:19:10,360 --> 00:19:15,200 It lists Fannie Campbell as the Head of Family. 221 00:19:15,280 --> 00:19:18,320 That is really, really unusual at this time period. 222 00:19:18,400 --> 00:19:20,520 That's just fabulous! 223 00:19:23,280 --> 00:19:30,640 Fannie embodies that sorta frontier spirit, because she was fearless. 224 00:19:30,720 --> 00:19:35,520 I think I loved her from the moment I, you know, saw her slate with that bold child 225 00:19:35,600 --> 00:19:38,520 writing "Fannie" on it. 226 00:19:38,600 --> 00:19:44,360 So, oftentimes it's the small, tiny items that are really, really telling. 227 00:19:46,440 --> 00:19:49,640 These objects are a way for us to sorta get a better understanding 228 00:19:49,720 --> 00:19:53,880 of what everyday life was like in the American West. 229 00:20:05,080 --> 00:20:07,920 NARRATOR: Settlers continue to push westward. 230 00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:13,320 In 1874, gold is found in the Great Sioux Reservation. 231 00:20:17,000 --> 00:20:20,640 DR MELISSA: The entire westward push was in a public policy 232 00:20:20,720 --> 00:20:23,040 called the Manifest Destiny, 233 00:20:24,120 --> 00:20:30,000 but the indigenous peoples were really not thought of as part of that. 234 00:20:31,160 --> 00:20:37,520 Instead, the idea is putting them on reservations, giving them land. 235 00:20:38,800 --> 00:20:41,680 The Black Hills is traditional Sioux land, 236 00:20:41,760 --> 00:20:47,760 was given to the Sioux as long as the sky was blue and the grass was green. 237 00:20:48,680 --> 00:20:53,600 It did not mention a darn word about the hills becoming gold. 238 00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:08,080 DR DOUG: By the 1870s, and particularly with gold being discovered 239 00:21:08,160 --> 00:21:12,640 in the Black Hills, and the Black Hills being opened up by Congress, 240 00:21:12,720 --> 00:21:15,360 the Army was given the task of protecting 241 00:21:15,440 --> 00:21:18,800 the miners from the Indians, so Custer was following 242 00:21:18,880 --> 00:21:23,080 his orders to find the Indians that had 243 00:21:23,160 --> 00:21:26,320 been out and left the reservation. 244 00:21:26,400 --> 00:21:32,680 NARRATOR: On June 25th, 1876, the 7th US Cavalry, led by Lieutenant Colonel George 245 00:21:32,760 --> 00:21:37,120 Custer, confronts a large Native American encampment. 246 00:21:37,200 --> 00:21:40,320 DR DOUG: To take that traditional view of what happened, 247 00:21:40,400 --> 00:21:44,160 it was Custer surprised by the number of Indians 248 00:21:44,240 --> 00:21:47,560 and his command was surrounded quickly, 249 00:21:47,640 --> 00:21:50,520 and destroyed by all these mounted warriors. 250 00:21:51,520 --> 00:21:57,040 The archaeological record tells us it was much more complex than that. 251 00:22:03,920 --> 00:22:08,640 ERNIE: My name's Ernie Lapointe, and I am Lakota. 252 00:22:10,360 --> 00:22:14,080 My relationship to this battlefield is my great-grandfather, 253 00:22:14,160 --> 00:22:14,840 Sitting Bull. 254 00:22:16,520 --> 00:22:19,760 My story about this battle was told to me orally. 255 00:22:19,840 --> 00:22:22,600 My two grand-uncles were there. 256 00:22:22,680 --> 00:22:26,680 And I'm one of the last survivors who has the story about this, 257 00:22:26,760 --> 00:22:28,240 and I'm passing it on. 258 00:22:30,760 --> 00:22:36,480 DR DOUG: There were Native American accounts, but they had been largely discounted. 259 00:22:36,560 --> 00:22:42,080 The traditional story of this battle is largely based on the military accounts. 260 00:22:45,240 --> 00:22:48,600 Custer and his command all clustered together on Last Stand Hill, 261 00:22:48,680 --> 00:22:53,680 with the warriors just swarming and swirling around him. 262 00:22:53,760 --> 00:22:54,880 ERNIE: They're going, "Ah, ah, ah, ah!" 263 00:22:54,960 --> 00:22:57,240 and they're running round in a circle, you know? 264 00:22:57,840 --> 00:23:01,360 They said, "We outnumber him." They try to make 265 00:23:01,440 --> 00:23:05,400 Custer look like he's some kind of a hero who was massacred. 266 00:23:10,960 --> 00:23:14,520 DR DOUG: That's the traditional view of what happened at that battle. 267 00:23:18,520 --> 00:23:23,600 And it wasn't until 1983 and those remarkable 268 00:23:23,680 --> 00:23:27,680 discoveries being made that it all changes. 269 00:23:34,000 --> 00:23:39,600 It started due to a careless smoker who passed by and threw a cigarette butt out, 270 00:23:39,680 --> 00:23:41,720 started a wild land fire. 271 00:23:49,880 --> 00:23:56,840 And what that did was remove all the vegetation, and it gave us access to a field. 272 00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:02,680 This gave us the opportunity to actually do archaeology on the park. 273 00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:09,120 DICK: Have the archaeologists solved the riddles of Custer's Last Stand? 274 00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:12,680 DR DOUG: At that point, certainly, those would be the areas that often held. 275 00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:16,280 DR MELISSA: Who is that guy with the beard? 276 00:24:16,360 --> 00:24:18,280 DR DOUG: Me! (laughs) 277 00:24:18,360 --> 00:24:21,520 I was 36 when we did the project. 278 00:24:21,600 --> 00:24:25,040 I was a supervisory archaeologist with the National Park Service 279 00:24:25,120 --> 00:24:27,320 at the time. 280 00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:33,200 Melissa and I worked together. We knew each other in Lincoln. 281 00:24:33,280 --> 00:24:38,520 DR MELISSA: We worked together '84 and '85 as colleagues, 282 00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:43,840 and then we started going out together, 283 00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:46,760 and, of course, in '87 we were married. 284 00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:50,840 So, yeah, I guess it became more than a collegial situation. 285 00:24:50,920 --> 00:24:53,560 (laughs) 286 00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:58,080 DR DOUG: There are marble markers on the field today 287 00:24:58,160 --> 00:25:02,760 that allegedly mark where men died in battle. 288 00:25:02,840 --> 00:25:05,160 DR MELISSA: Part of the reason the Custer story 289 00:25:05,240 --> 00:25:09,600 became such a legend was because tons of people 290 00:25:09,680 --> 00:25:14,840 have made battlefield reconstructions based on the location of those markers. 291 00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:20,480 But, of course, the markers weren't put in till, like, 15 years after the battle, 292 00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:23,080 so it's not surprising that those markers 293 00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:26,520 and the whole legend have the potential not to be accurate. 294 00:25:26,600 --> 00:25:28,120 DR DOUG: Split. Looks like it's been. 295 00:25:28,200 --> 00:25:31,280 So, we wanted to find the physical evidence 296 00:25:31,360 --> 00:25:34,400 so we could then use that physical evidence 297 00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:38,640 to reconstruct what really happened at that battle. 298 00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:42,360 What we did not know was how much stuff had been salvaged 299 00:25:42,440 --> 00:25:46,720 right after the battle by the victorious warriors. 300 00:25:46,800 --> 00:25:50,560 We got our crews lined up and we set a crew out. 301 00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:53,720 Yeah, we were worried that maybe there wasn't anything left. 302 00:25:55,880 --> 00:25:58,200 Now we've been looking for those bodies. 303 00:25:59,760 --> 00:26:04,720 And in the first hour they were walking around, they found absolutely nothing. 304 00:26:05,880 --> 00:26:07,280 Literally, nothing. 305 00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:14,880 Right behind them we had a group of metal detectorists 306 00:26:14,960 --> 00:26:17,440 anxious to show us what they could do. 307 00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:20,880 The use of metal detector's a little controversial. 308 00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:25,720 They have largely been passed off by archaeologists as the tool of the Devil, 309 00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:29,200 because they were used in looting, but we decided 310 00:26:29,280 --> 00:26:32,680 that we would try it in a controlled environment there. 311 00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:38,200 DR MELISSA: So, you'd start to hear them, "Ding, ding, ding! 312 00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:40,160 Ding, ding, ding! Ding, ding!" 313 00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:43,320 REPORTER: Detector machines began to sing wildly. Finds were made along the. 314 00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:47,440 DR DOUG: In the same time period of that first hour, 315 00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:51,800 they had found over 100 battle-related artefacts. 316 00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:08,320 Bits and pieces of saddle gear. 317 00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:12,840 DR MELISSA: Boot nails that were in boots 318 00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:16,160 that were attached to human leg bones. 319 00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:23,680 DR DOUG: We had the back strap from a Colt Army revolver. 320 00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:27,720 DR MELISSA: It was just a lot of fun. 321 00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:31,320 I mean, it's like the greatest Easter egg hunt in the world. 322 00:27:33,840 --> 00:27:38,560 DR DOUG: But more importantly was the discovery of bullets 323 00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:43,560 and cartridge cases. There were hundreds of them. 324 00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:51,280 People think of Little Bighorn as basically from the Hollywood perspective 325 00:27:51,360 --> 00:27:52,880 of a bow and arrow fight. 326 00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:57,160 We found, out of 5,000 artefacts, 12 arrowheads. 327 00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:00,840 That tells us they were used, but they were not the most important thing. 328 00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:02,760 This was a gun battle. 329 00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:04,560 -That's a hammer DR MELISSA: Well, well! 330 00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:08,840 DR DOUG: I'll be damned! That's a. 44 hammer. 331 00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:12,240 The bullets and cartridge cases were bagged and labelled, 332 00:28:12,320 --> 00:28:14,720 and we subjected them to what's called 333 00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:18,840 "Firearms Identification." That allows us to determine 334 00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:22,320 what type of weapon they were fired in, 335 00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:24,680 whether it's Native American or soldier. 336 00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:29,080 Around the soldier locations we recovered 337 00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:32,880 mostly cartridge cases from single shot Springfield carbines, 338 00:28:34,840 --> 00:28:38,520 and if you do a few tests, you find out something interesting. 339 00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:42,080 MAN: This is the workhorse of the Army in the latter part of the 1800s, 340 00:28:42,160 --> 00:28:49,040 and this is the model 1873 Springfield, accurate up to about 200 yards. 341 00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:52,800 DR DOUG: They fire a high velocity bullet. 342 00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:54,800 (gun shot) 343 00:28:54,880 --> 00:28:58,560 But we found by experiment that they can take nearly ten seconds to reload, 344 00:28:58,640 --> 00:29:00,840 re-aim and fire again. 345 00:29:04,600 --> 00:29:09,400 Near the warrior sites we recovered cartridge cases from a variety of guns, 346 00:29:09,480 --> 00:29:13,280 specifically a large number of Winchester rifles. 347 00:29:14,640 --> 00:29:17,600 MAN: This is a model 1873 Winchester. 348 00:29:17,680 --> 00:29:19,320 It's a lever action. 349 00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:22,640 DR DOUG: Now, those can be pre-loaded with up to 14 cartridges, 350 00:29:22,720 --> 00:29:26,200 and we found they can shoot a round about every two seconds. 351 00:29:26,280 --> 00:29:31,200 (multiply gunshots) 352 00:29:31,280 --> 00:29:34,480 Now, that's an entirely different type of fire power. 353 00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:35,840 (multiply gunshots) 354 00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:37,440 DR MELISSA: Wow! That'd be a little faster 355 00:29:37,520 --> 00:29:39,880 than those soldier weapons would fire, wouldn't it? 356 00:29:39,960 --> 00:29:41,880 DR DOUG: Quite a bit. 357 00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:46,800 We began to appreciate more and more the skill set of the Native Americans. 358 00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:48,800 They knew how to deal with a firearm. 359 00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:50,960 They were sophisticated in their weapon systems; 360 00:29:51,040 --> 00:29:54,360 they were sophisticated in the use of their weapons systems. 361 00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:59,080 MAN: This is an expended. 45-70 cartridge here. 362 00:29:59,160 --> 00:30:01,080 Probably this is a soldier's position. 363 00:30:01,160 --> 00:30:03,520 DR DOUG: It quickly became obvious that those cartridge cases 364 00:30:03,600 --> 00:30:06,160 and bullets were gonna tell us more. 365 00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:12,720 There were microscopic striae in those firing pin marks 366 00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:15,880 that would indicate that this cartridge case 367 00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:20,600 and this cartridge case found 30ft from it were fired in the same gun. 368 00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:23,760 We can literally follow the movement of some of those 369 00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:25,520 weapons around the battlefield, 370 00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:28,520 and then we can make presumptions about who carried them. 371 00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:34,320 We have clusters of soldiers. 372 00:30:34,400 --> 00:30:37,800 A couple of those three guys and guns moved down, 373 00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:40,640 and then we don't see any more movement. 374 00:30:42,080 --> 00:30:43,920 Soldiers were trained to fight in place, 375 00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:48,720 to get in skirmish line and do what they were told, and they did. 376 00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:54,240 And the warriors, on the other hand, were fighting in much more looser war groups. 377 00:30:56,240 --> 00:30:58,880 They might stay in one position and shoot, 378 00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:03,840 and then move to another position and shoot. 379 00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:07,720 They used that terrain to protect themselves. 380 00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:16,120 ERNIE: Each individual Lakota man had his own style 381 00:31:16,200 --> 00:31:20,520 of understanding how to defend the people, how to defend the land. 382 00:31:24,040 --> 00:31:26,680 DR DOUG: Custer's men were outgunned and outfought, 383 00:31:26,760 --> 00:31:29,000 based on the analysis of the terrain 384 00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:31,440 and where those cartridge cases and bullets were found. 385 00:31:35,120 --> 00:31:36,800 The traditional view of the end of the battle 386 00:31:36,880 --> 00:31:41,360 is that some element of Custer's immediate command is surrounded, 387 00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:44,120 and there's this grand Last Stand. 388 00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:46,240 You know, you've got to think about this as 389 00:31:46,320 --> 00:31:50,960 what's great on screen is not the way these battles played out. 390 00:31:55,480 --> 00:32:00,800 Custer's body was positively identified on Last Stand Hill. 391 00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:06,920 He had been shot in the chest, and also a gunshot wound to the left temple. 392 00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:11,520 ERNIE: There's so many stories, you know, that come out 393 00:32:11,600 --> 00:32:15,920 from all the historians, saying, "Custer was the last guy on the hill." 394 00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:19,640 Most of the stories that was told to me from my grand-uncles, 395 00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:24,160 they never speculated or wondered, it was what they seen. 396 00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:29,680 DR DOUG: Probably at the end of the battle, 397 00:32:29,760 --> 00:32:32,920 some men tried to break away from the Last Stand Hill 398 00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:36,080 and tried to go into Deep Ravine. 399 00:32:37,600 --> 00:32:42,080 At Marker Number Two, at the head of Deep Ravine itself, 400 00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:47,080 there were some soldier cartridges, indicating that a soldier had fallen there. 401 00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:53,480 But, more importantly, there were at least six different Native American firearms 402 00:32:53,560 --> 00:32:56,880 represented in the bullets that impacted in that position. 403 00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:04,440 Well, if you've got six different warriors firing at that one guy, 404 00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:07,720 it suggests you've got the time to have a bunch 405 00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:11,480 of warriors clustered together and fire at somebody, 406 00:33:11,560 --> 00:33:17,520 which, to me, suggests that this might be one of the last guys 407 00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:19,720 on the field. Not Custer. 408 00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:26,760 Your story and our archaeological record 409 00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:30,800 are all consistent with how this thing plays out. 410 00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:35,640 ERNIE: Right. It was guerrilla fighting skills that helped 'em defeat Custer. 411 00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:40,360 DR DOUG: People think of Little Bighorn, 412 00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:42,280 and especially from the Hollywood perspective, 413 00:33:42,360 --> 00:33:45,920 of good guys and bad guys, and the good guys win and all that sorta thing. 414 00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:50,840 But both the historical record, the archaeological record 415 00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:53,760 and the Native narrative, the oral history, 416 00:33:53,840 --> 00:33:56,560 tell us it as much more complex. 417 00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:04,800 We really do have a better understanding of the past and what happened at that battle. 418 00:34:12,720 --> 00:34:16,440 NARRATOR: Despite the Native American victory at the Little Bighorn, 419 00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:20,880 westward expansion continues, in search of more gold. 420 00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:24,800 CHELSEA: When you start to really dig into the real story of the Wild West, 421 00:34:24,880 --> 00:34:28,800 you realise that there are lots of people that have a stake in this story 422 00:34:28,880 --> 00:34:30,600 that are totally ignored. 423 00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:35,040 And, as an archaeologist, I feel a responsibility 424 00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:39,600 to those people to do the best I can to tell their story, 425 00:34:39,680 --> 00:34:41,480 to challenge the stereotypes, 426 00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:44,960 to bring in all the other people that were part of the story, 427 00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:46,840 but are missing from the history books. 428 00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:54,920 Bumpy! 429 00:34:56,400 --> 00:35:00,440 Coming out of the valley, you drive around these windy hills, 430 00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:02,880 and it just seems like it goes forever and forever, 431 00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:04,960 and you can just see so far in the distance. 432 00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:14,320 And all of a sudden you come around the corner. 433 00:35:19,280 --> 00:35:20,640 And there's Bodie. 434 00:35:23,800 --> 00:35:25,280 Oh, my gosh, that's awesome! 435 00:35:29,800 --> 00:35:34,080 When you think about gold fever, when you come to a place like Bodie, 436 00:35:34,160 --> 00:35:36,640 you see the power of that mineral. 437 00:35:39,960 --> 00:35:43,160 Nothing about living here would have been easy. Nothing! 438 00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:47,600 Getting here, getting food in, getting shelter. 439 00:35:47,680 --> 00:35:50,680 Everything was an uphill battle, but people did it 440 00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:54,600 because of the potential to go out and get rich. 441 00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:00,080 From a young age I was obsessed with the Wild West. 442 00:36:03,560 --> 00:36:08,080 When I was a kid, my dad took me to Virginia City, a silver mining town, 443 00:36:08,160 --> 00:36:10,960 and I thought that was so much cooler than Disneyland. 444 00:36:11,040 --> 00:36:13,840 Hi! DENISE: Hi! Welcome to Bodie! 445 00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:15,640 CHELSEA: Greetings! How are you? 446 00:36:15,720 --> 00:36:17,000 DENISE: I'm good. Good. 447 00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:20,240 Gold mining here in Bodie really declined over time, 448 00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:22,480 and so people started to move on. 449 00:36:24,720 --> 00:36:29,880 That's when Bodie became more of a ghost mining town in the 1920s. 450 00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:37,760 My job is to preserve Bodie, freeze it in time, essentially. 451 00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:42,640 Today, there's about 150 buildings total. 452 00:36:42,720 --> 00:36:46,320 Back in the day, at the height of Bodie, about 2,000. 453 00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:49,680 Here we are at the crossroads, Green Street and then Main Street. 454 00:36:49,760 --> 00:36:51,160 This would have been the commercial court. 455 00:36:51,240 --> 00:36:52,360 CHELSEA: Yeah. DENISE: Right. 456 00:36:52,440 --> 00:36:53,760 And it was about one mile in length. 457 00:36:53,840 --> 00:36:56,280 CHELSEA: Uh-huh? Wow! Jeez! DENISE: Mm-hm! 458 00:36:59,320 --> 00:37:04,000 CHELSEA: There are parts that have been preserved, but there's key neighborhoods, 459 00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:06,920 key parts of this story that are no longer here. 460 00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:10,480 Do you have maps or any sort of imagery from this area to give 461 00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:12,880 us a sense of how many buildings would have been here? 462 00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:15,160 DENISE: What we've been working on is trying to recreate 463 00:37:15,240 --> 00:37:17,320 the town in that boom years, right, 464 00:37:17,400 --> 00:37:23,880 in the 1880s, to basically recreate in a 3D model form, and bring it back to life. 465 00:37:23,960 --> 00:37:25,640 CHELSEA: We're lucky here at Bodie, 466 00:37:25,720 --> 00:37:28,680 there's lots of evidence to help fill in the gaps in this story, 467 00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:30,680 but I've got this image in my head, 468 00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:35,240 but I'm really excited to see what Bodie looked like in 3D color in 1880. 469 00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:50,480 PROF NICOLA: What is very well-studied about Bodie is the core, the downtown, 470 00:37:50,560 --> 00:37:52,280 and mostly the buildings, 471 00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:55,960 but it's been estimated that more than 90 percent of what's left of Bodie 472 00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:58,880 is things that you cannot see across the landscape. 473 00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:04,080 So, there is so much to still investigate. 474 00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:11,760 The lidar that we're using now is called 475 00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:15,360 "simultaneous location and mapping," or SLAM lidar, 476 00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:18,760 which is a handheld device that I can carry around, 477 00:38:18,840 --> 00:38:22,040 and then use it to scan the landscape and the environment 478 00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:26,080 with great accuracy, to help us understand the archaeological signature, 479 00:38:26,160 --> 00:38:27,680 even without digging. 480 00:38:30,160 --> 00:38:35,040 Starting from the signature, from the ruins, if we collect the data in 3D, 481 00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:40,960 we can use it to reconstruct the entire building, show we can show how the past was, 482 00:38:41,040 --> 00:38:45,760 how building were before being demolished, and bring the past back to life. 483 00:38:49,080 --> 00:38:53,600 DENISE: I do photogrammetry with this drone, basically capturing images. 484 00:38:53,680 --> 00:38:55,720 And we're gonna map, this morning, 485 00:38:55,800 --> 00:38:59,640 basically to complement the data that Nicola's capturing with the geo-SLAM. 486 00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:03,880 Woo! 487 00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:13,960 CHELSEA: I've seen early photographs, I've seen maps, 488 00:39:14,040 --> 00:39:16,480 and one of the things that I've learned is 489 00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:19,760 there's still so much that we don't know. 490 00:39:34,280 --> 00:39:37,720 DENISE: It's amazing to see it come together like this. 491 00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:40,000 CHELSEA: Wow! You can really see the size of Bodie. 492 00:39:40,080 --> 00:39:41,880 It looks so much bigger. 493 00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:49,320 DENISE: You would have shops, mercantile, barber shops, markets. 494 00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:52,760 I think at the height there was about 60 saloons. 495 00:39:55,920 --> 00:40:02,080 CHELSEA: This really shows you; I mean, this was a city. How cool! 496 00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:05,400 DENISE: In this area, there's not much detail. 497 00:40:05,480 --> 00:40:07,520 It would be interesting to take a closer look there. 498 00:40:14,640 --> 00:40:18,000 There were some buildings that historians have documented, 499 00:40:18,080 --> 00:40:22,520 although there's some interpretation of this part o' town, it's very minimal. 500 00:40:22,600 --> 00:40:26,840 So, that's an area that really is screaming for more attention. 501 00:40:32,040 --> 00:40:33,760 PROF NICOLA: I think this could be interesting. 502 00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:39,880 I mean, this is definitely some type of ruin, remains of a building. 503 00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:43,360 CHELSEA: Come, come, come! 504 00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:49,960 This is a medicine bottle. That is so cool! 505 00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:52,640 DENISE: Mm-hm. CHELSEA: These are distinctive Chinese medicine bottles. 506 00:40:52,720 --> 00:40:59,280 So, they would contain liquid or pelletised pills. How awesome! (laughs) 507 00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:02,680 One of the first places that the word of the discovery of gold 508 00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:06,880 makes it is Hawaii and China, because that's where all the ships 509 00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:09,520 were going out of this West coast of California. 510 00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:11,720 It was way easier to get to places like that 511 00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:16,560 via boats than it was to get across the United States. 512 00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:18,920 So, I can tell right now we're in a Chinese residence 513 00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:22,360 just by the suite of artefacts. Just in this one little spot. 514 00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:25,440 This is so exciting. This is somebody's house. This is the garbage of somebody's life. 515 00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:31,040 So, this is pretty cool. DENISE: Yeah! 516 00:41:31,120 --> 00:41:34,800 CHELSEA: Even the Chinese, they had a name for California, "Gold Mountain, 517 00:41:34,880 --> 00:41:37,680 because of the potential to go out and get rich. 518 00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:42,080 PROF NICOLA: Come see right here, another ruin. CHELSEA: Oh, yeah! 519 00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:44,560 PROF NICOLA: You can see here all the foundation. 520 00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:46,520 CHELSEA: It looks like dry-stacked masonry, 521 00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:49,840 and maybe there's some Chinese techniques in some of that architecture? 522 00:41:49,920 --> 00:41:53,440 PROF NICOLA: Yeah, that's what we hope. 523 00:41:53,520 --> 00:41:56,360 CHELSEA: So, a Chinese miner coming out to look for a gold strike 524 00:41:56,440 --> 00:41:58,640 would come against several obstacles. 525 00:41:58,720 --> 00:42:05,000 One of 'em was in many areas they were not allowed to stake a claim. 526 00:42:05,080 --> 00:42:08,440 Chinese immigrants can't buy houses, or if you have a store, fine, 527 00:42:08,520 --> 00:42:11,000 you have to pay 50 bucks a month, even though nobody else does. 528 00:42:11,080 --> 00:42:13,280 It was just one thing after another, 529 00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:17,680 targeting this population to kind of prevent them from putting down roots. 530 00:42:19,400 --> 00:42:21,720 However, they figured workarounds. 531 00:42:21,800 --> 00:42:25,160 They would partner with folks; they would buy used claims. 532 00:42:25,240 --> 00:42:29,200 These folks persisted. They were not cowered in the corners. 533 00:42:29,280 --> 00:42:32,160 They were still building lives; they were still being successful. 534 00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:36,960 CHELSEA: Whoa! There's Chinatown! 535 00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:39,520 (laughs) 536 00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:47,680 Many of the Chinese chose to take up jobs working for individuals or restaurants, 537 00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:51,120 doing laundry, doing domestic tasks. 538 00:42:54,000 --> 00:42:56,760 CHELSEA: The Chinese populations contributed to the economy. 539 00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:06,920 The money-built roads, built cities, that we all still enjoy today. 540 00:43:11,360 --> 00:43:14,600 And that's lost if you don't look for it. 541 00:43:16,240 --> 00:43:18,680 Places like Bodie, it's here. 542 00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:20,240 These stories are just waiting to be told. 543 00:43:30,240 --> 00:43:35,560 A more inclusive history is a more accurate way to tell American history. 544 00:43:36,160 --> 00:43:38,240 DR ANNALIES: It's important to correct the story 545 00:43:38,320 --> 00:43:42,720 because we can only move forward by having 546 00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:45,760 a true understanding of what has been. 547 00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:48,840 ERNIE: This running around in a circle thing 548 00:43:48,920 --> 00:43:52,160 is just a figment of imagination as a movie maker. 549 00:43:52,240 --> 00:43:53,880 Hollywood doesn't know anything about 550 00:43:53,960 --> 00:43:55,640 what I just told you. 551 00:43:56,920 --> 00:44:01,640 DR DOUG: When you get into the true history and realize how complex it is, 552 00:44:01,720 --> 00:44:04,880 it breaks the myth, it blows the myth up. 553 00:44:05,880 --> 00:44:06,880 Captioned by SubTitlePro LLC