(bright flute music) (rhythmic drumming) (fife and drum music) (gunfire blasts) - [Soldier] Company, erect your firearm!

(dramatic drumming music) (soldiers chattering) - Shoulder your firelock!

- [Soldiers] Huzzah!

- [Reenactor] There was a shot heard around the world.

We defeated the British and suddenly we were America.

- [Colin] Places like Lexington and the Eastern Colonies, it gives impression that the Revolution is exclusively an East Coast event.

- [Melissa] We are taught that story a lot in school.

It happens starting on the East Coast and then kind of gradually comes westward.

- [Reenactor] The reality is so much more complicated.

(wistful somber music) (wistful somber music continues) (wistful somber music continues) - [Colin] What's happening in the colonies, it's not the only revolution.

These radical, life-changing events are happening elsewhere.

- [Tribal Member] For our people, there was no America, as you call it.

- [Arlen] Why is it important?

It's because of who we come from.

Where we originated from.

- [Albert] We didn't have any written languages, no alphabet system.

All of it was told through stories.

(wings flapping softly) (vehicle whooshing) My mom's lived on the reservation for most of her life.

I'm really in touch with some of my grandpas, my uncles, my aunties, all from the reservation.

(waves lapping) I went to a white high school.

Cool rocks, huh?

Their history is more focused on pioneers.

Oh, look at these.

Just not any of the Native stuff.

Look it.

Some snails.

There's not many elders who speak fluently anymore.

And, you know, even less people my age who speak fluently.

(river babbling) I'd like to know what was our loss.

What stories were lost?

What teachings?

Our worldviews were so complex, if we lose all that, we're just a people with a name.

- [Lynette] Our young people want to know about our past.

They wanna know our languages.

Our histories predate the Revolution.

Our people are actually buried in those mountains.

- [Jennifer] You hear various stories, how we were fierce, how we were feared, how we were regarded by other tribes, and that happened long before the Revolution happened.

Talking to my grandma or talking to my uncles, I learned more from my family about our history than I would have ever learned from my education.

- [Lynette] It's only until recently that I've really learned about the world of our people before Lewis and Clark.

The Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina.

I can name those.

I heard about the Boston Tea Party, but there was no mention of Native Americans.

(singers chanting) (rhythmic drumming music) - [Jennifer] We are omitted from so many conversations.

(singers chanting) (rhythmic drumming music) - When we're talking about the Declaration of Independence, what's never discussed is the language in that very document.

"Merciless Indian Savages."

(singers chanting) (rhythmic drumming music) (players chattering) (players laughing) (singers chanting) (rhythmic drumming music) (bacon sizzling) - [Lynette] We just think that the lights are gonna come on, the house is gonna be heated, we're gonna have food on the table.

The lessons that we have inherited from our ancestors is how to take care of each other, and I think that lesson has sometimes been lost.

- [Jennifer] You know what I think about?

This might be stupid, but, like!

(laughs) Like, when me and Andrew would go up into the mountain, or whatever, and, like, I'd look around and I'd sit there and be like, "Man, I feel real humbled.

My ancestors are probably real ashamed watching me use MapQuest or use navigation and get lost."

So, I wonder what they think when they watch me live my daily life.

They're probably like, "Watch this one over-time.

She needs us."

(laughs) (somber music) - [Lynette] To be able to use the lessons that our grandfathers and their grandfathers had to survive, I mean, very few people have that knowledge now.

- [Jennifer] How do we know where we're going unless we know where we've been?

Elders is the place to start.

It begins and ends with them.

- [Reba] I didn't learn much history in school, but we used to watch TV.

And at that time, it was John Wayne and the Cowboys and Indians.

(guns blasting) (warriors howling) When I would watch the Westerns, the Indians were always the bad guys.

And I was always cheering for the cowboys, 'cause I didn't know any different.

And then one day I was at Fort Washakie School and a little non-Indian girl, she called me a dirty Indian.

And at that moment it dawned on me, "Hey, I'm one of the bad guys."

(students chattering) - [Teacher] Okay, what's this one?

Here?

Okay.

What's the brain?

(student speaking Shoshone) (teacher speaking Shoshone) Okay, what's the hair?

(student speaking Shoshone) (teacher speaking Shoshone) Okay!

What's the head?

- [Arlen] The way that they say apple in Shoshone, they just say "Aappo'."

Almost similar to the way it sounds in English.

(class speaking Shoshone) (class speaking Shoshone) - [Teacher] Okay, good job.

We're just learning the pledge.

We've been working on it.

- [John] I spend a lot of time talking about the history of the Shoshone, whether it be a university or fourth grade classes.

It gives me an opportunity to let them know we have a history too, and it's much older than the Constitution.

(rhythmic drumming music) - [Announcer] We're online!

Eastern Shoshone, stand up!

We bring a good group from Fort Washakie, Wyoming.

(group chattering) - [Tribal Elder] Remember our language!

(speaking in Shoshone) It's only gonna go away in your heart if you let it.

- [child] I am the 4th of July Tiny Tot Princess.

Say Hi to the Shoshonean Reunion Thank you, bye.

♪ La la la la la la la ♪ (audience cheering) (audience applauding) (pensive flute music) (airy pensive music) - [Lynette] Before there was any Wyoming in this area, there were Indigenous peoples that were living here off the land.

They were here existing way before the influence of the settlers.

- [Tarissa] Wyoming was very resource-rich, you know, with the mountains and the lakes and the grasslands that many tribes were in and out.

- [Melissa] We're always very tied to the written word, the documentary evidence, and that's partly because of our disciplinary training.

But if we're thinking about the West and the era of the American Revolution, that picture's incomplete if we're not also thinking about what do oral histories say about that period of time.

- [Colin] People always document their history and always record their history.

But it takes time.

We have to learn how to read it.

Or, if we can't read it, talk to the people who can.

- [Jimmy] The landscape itself is where our stories are written and told.

And now modern science is kind of revealing and highlighting, you know, that deep past.

- [Melissa] What have archaeologists discovered, anthropologists discovered about what was going on both in that period, and before and after, that can shed light on that story?

- [Jacqueline] This site is an incredible window into 1776.

The site was first used as a bison trap in about 1559, and it was last used in about 1800.

- [Spencer] So in a lot of different buffalo hunting sites, in the plains and in jumps, you'll find these lines of stone piles kind of leading to that point where people drove these bison off the cliff.

Leading from, like, a big pasture, what we call the gathering basin, and then becoming increasingly constricted as you get towards that jump point.

(hooves stampeding) (bison snorting) (rocks clattering) - [Donovin] It took a lot of people to organize that, like, maybe 50 to even 100 people.

But because, you know, that's your opportunity right there to put up a lot of meat for the winter.

- [Spencer] So we have this amazing snapshot into the ways people hunted the actual bison populations that lived on the Great Plains during that time, the seasonality of these events, the types of mobility patterns that the people hunting here had, and how those changed through 300 years.

And somewhere around here, the United States was founded about 1776.

There were people back East bickering over what to put in the Declaration of Independence and how to form a new government.

All the while people were hunting bison at the Vore site, probably unaware of the forces at play.

(pensive wistful music) - [Colin] Shoshones, originally like Comanches and Utes, seem to have originated in what is now the Great Basin.

There was a great huge drought there in the 14th century and the population exit and different groups go different directions.

- [Greg] You've got these tribal nations that are all overlapping, moving back and forth across the Continental Divide, in and out of the river basins and the desert basins through the seasons.

- [John] In the 1500s, the Eastern Shoshone moved out on the plains and they spoke the Numic language of the Uto-Aztec language group.

- [Reba] We traveled with the seasons.

There were certain times that we would hunt buffalo or the elk.

We would travel to certain areas to gather our stuff and meet and socialize, visit, and then play games, hand games, gamble, races.

(hooves racing) - [Reba] Early 1700s, the Spanish brought horses to the Southwest.

The Comanches acquired them, stole them, traded, stole them from the Spanish.

And then also the Utes, who were our Southern allies, the Northern and Southern Utes.

- [Colin] They kind of re-imagined themselves as a people.

They swing onto the back of horses and it gives them a new future, a new sense of confidence, a new sense of themselves.

(mellow pensive music) (birds singing) - [Arlen] What I remember my grandfather talking about is that they moved around quite a bit.

Followed whatever the season was.

We look at not only horses, but our different creatures that inhabit this earth as someone that we talk to.

That's who we used to get our direction from.

And buffalo played a big part in our diet.

- [Colin] The horse now gave peoples the opportunity to harvest buffalo herds in a much more efficient and food secure way.

That transforms the Great Plains from an area where people lived somewhat precariously to a place where people wanted to live, where there were opportunities for unprecedented power and prosperity.

- [Jason] The horse made that trade network much more robust.

And we were trading with the tribes in the Northwest for salmon and the Great Lakes region for rice.

And of course the Southwest tribes were dry land agriculturalists and growing crops and things that would've been very valuable to tribes that were not agricultural.

- [Greg] In the summertime, a lot of the tribal movements would head towards these rendezvous or trade fair that they would have with different tribes, and that was happening before the fur trade ever started up.

(mellow somber music) (group chattering) - [Dudley] They really quickly adapted to the horse and really quickly became dominant in that area.

And that's one reason that this place right here was so important.

You have excellent pastures around here.

You have excellent water.

You have places where your horses can be corralled in this so-called natural corrals, where you can contain 'em.

And Native Americans did build horse fences.

They didn't just hobble their horses, they built fences.

This had better access to the plains, you could go from here to New Mexico without ever crossing a high pass.

So then you had ties to the West Coast through the old Southwestern trade networks.

We have items coming in from the Northwest Coast, trade shells, and then early Russian stuff.

- [Greg] There are all these stories in Wyoming of things that originated very, very far away in European markets and European manufacture and ended up here.

There are things like glass beads from Venice that are here in what is now Wyoming in the 1700s.

- [Dudley] The fact that they've got Venetian trade beads here really early on just astounded me.

- [Donovin] The trade was really beneficial to all the tribes when they would come in because they all had things that the others wanted, whatever it be, from their different regions.

So a lot of differences were put aside for the benefit of the trade.

It's time for peace in this area.

Almost like a sacred area, you know?

And they might go back to having differences later.

- [Reba] It was like a big camp where we all celebrated life together.

And there was marriages, there was a lot of discussions, and they would decide where each band was gonna go.

Kinda like tell each other, "Well, we're gonna go here and we're gonna go there."

So it was like a planning session.

The buffalo was our food source.

I mean, we had millions.

We had all our salmon and we had plants.

So we were rich in that way.

- [Lynette] Our Shoshone people commanded the prairies because of the horse.

- [Donovin] They were very feared and respected.

And even later, as we moved further to the west, we had conflict with the Shoshone.

- [Reba] We were "Nadiand", which means fierce.

- [John] At one time, the Eastern band of Shoshone had 400 warriors that they mounted, which was rather big during that time period.

But when you join all of the rest of them and the Shobans, and probably some Paiute, it's even larger.

- [Tarissa] When the horse came, it just made things, you know, a lot quicker, a lot faster.

The Shoshone were influential in that way that the horse was acquired after the dog days, and now tribes could travel even further with the horse.

- [Mary] If you look at the rock art, the shields on the old people were covered all the way from their neck to their feet.

So as the horse comes in, they can't, you know?

So this short bow comes in and then the shield becomes this size, so it just covers this part.

But the bow changes, and that's the only really thing that changes at that time.

Again, still thinking about distance, movement, weight.

'Cause you gotta carry all this stuff, so you wanna make everything as lightweight as possible.

- [Reba] They said it could shoot as fast as a bullet, the speed.

And our hunters were so good with it that you could put an arrow through a bison just, you know, right through it.

- [Colin] Shoshones are able to push out onto the Northern and Central Plains, and in doing so, push other people off the plains.

So there seems to have been a period when the Shoshones were a dominant presence.

- [John] For a while, we had went all the way from Southwestern Wyoming all the way into Canada, which is kind of what most history books would say is a glorious period for the Eastern Shoshone.

But it didn't last all that long.

(gunfire blasts) (fighters chattering) - [Colin] The Blackfeet get guns before the Shoshones get guns because whereas the Shoshones had been closest to supplies of horses in the South, the Blackfeet were closest to supplies of guns in the North.

- [Tarissa] It changed the lifestyle.

You know, it made killing a lot faster and easier.

- [John] As soon as the other tribes who had the rifle and then the horse, they pushed Shoshone back.

- [Lynette] And that kind of leveled the playing field in terms of the inter-tribal relationships that we had here.

And it also provided other tribes with a way to minimize the forces of our people.

- [Colin] I'm often thinking in terms of shifting balances of power.

Well, horses generates one set of shifts in the balance of power.

Guns generate another very often counter-effect.

And then smallpox sort of blows everything up.

(tense pensive music) - [John] We have a graveyard above Miles City, Montana, and it's a Shoshone graveyard.

The Blackfeet attacked the Shoshone camp there.

The camp was infested with smallpox.

- [Reader as Smaukamappe] From a high knoll, they had a good view of the camp, but saw none of the men hunting or going about.

Next morning, at the dawn of day, we attacked the tents and with our sharp flat knives cut through the tents and entered for the fight.

But our war whoop instantly stopped.

Our eyes were appalled with terror.

There was no one to fight with but the dead and the dying, each a mass of corruption.

The second day after, this dreadful disease broke out in our camp and swept away more than half of us by the smallpox.

- [Elizabeth] Smallpox broke out in Mexico City in 1780, and it progressed in Mexico City with incredible speed.

Something like 18,000 people died in Mexico City alone.

And then it spread northward, thanks to trade and the Spanish Mission Network.

It reached Santa Fe.

It reached San Antonio.

And from there, it somehow reached the Northern Plains.

So I think it's quite likely that Comanche people transmitted the infection to Shoshone people, Green River, you know, at other trade locations.

The Shoshones, they're horse-borne, they're mobile, encountering all kinds of other people, sometimes in war, sometimes in commerce, and any kind of encounter could transmit the infection.

And it exploded on the plains, spread eventually to Canada as well.

- [Colin] Americans and Brits are killing each other by the hundreds in the East.

But in the West, people are dying by the thousands because of this smallpox epidemic.

It not only takes a devastating toll in terms of population and heartbreak of losing loved ones, it causes society to act differently.

People do things differently.

It upends ways of life.

That West, by the time the United States acquires it, is a very different place.

- [Tarissa] In tribal worldview, there was always this foretelling or this foresight that would happen through visions, through ceremonies.

I mean, through archaeological sites, you know?

Writings on the wall.

They would foretell them of what was coming.

And today when you look at some of those writings, some of them look like aliens.

So there's, like, this foresight that there was something more, bigger than humans, but also it told of a lot of people that would be coming into the region.

(somber music) (wagons clattering) - [Melissa] Looking at the 18th century, the Spanish, the French, the British are all active in North America.

They all have this intense fear that another empire will get in there and make trade relationships with Native Americans.

They know that there is really good land, productive soil, and they know that because Indigenous people are farming it, right?

So they are aware that what's out West is something that's lucrative, that it's full of potential.

An idea of "the West" as a kind of place of opportunity and of Indigenous people in the minds of many colonists as being, you know, people that needed to be pushed aside and moved out of the way.

- [Jennifer] Imagine what it would be like standing there seeing this inevitable force coming towards you.

What decisions were made?

What was the thought process?

What was the fear?

What was everything underneath that we don't see?

(vehicle whooshing) (water spritzing) (family chattering) - [Albert] Kids on the reservation, I feel like they just have too many influences from Western culture to try to be engaged in their history, but they'll get there.

They'll find a way.

What I'd like to know what normal everyday Native Americans were thinking about.

What was their everyday life like?

- [Jennifer] I think it's making people more hungry for that information.

To figure out who we are.

To figure out where we came from.

- [Arlen] Some elders felt that some of our younger people weren't listening to them.

And so they kind of said, "Well, they don't want to know, so I'm gonna take it with me when I'm gone."

But hopefully that's not the mindset that we have now.

We wanna share our knowledge to our younger ones so they can carry it.

(gunfire blasts) (bison sniffing) (bison snorting) (somber music) - [Jason] As much as we don't know about the past, there is a lot of opportunity now to connect back with buffalo, the horse, and our lands.

(group chattering) (singer chanting hopefully) (group chattering) - [Arlen] Jason asked me to offer a prayer.

[Jason] This is your long-lost relative right here, but he's come home to us.

Bless yourselves with his presence.

Feel his hide.

You know, I want you to watch and learn.

So come up and touch him!

And then we're gonna get started here in a little bit.

(footsteps scuffling) (group chattering) (singer chanting) (blade scraping) - [Jason] All right, I think you can almost get in here now.

(meat ripping) - [T.K.]

You got it, River?

- [River] I got it!

(group chattering) (group laughing) - [River] The one on the right, right?

[T.k.]

The one on the left!

(group chattering) (mellow pensive music) (mellow pensive music continues) - [Quincy] "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal stations to which the laws of nature and the natures of God entitle them.

That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

He has excited domestic insurrections among us and endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

These united colonies, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm alliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

(somber music) (somber music continues)