Kevin Costner's the West (2025) s01e01 Episode Script

- What do we see when
we think of the West?
A gunfight between
some small town sheriff
and a gang of outlaws?
Maybe a cowboy playing
his banjo under the stars,
or a wild herd of buffalo
hunted by a party of
Comanche or Lakota.
For me, it's an image,
from a movie I saw at the
Cinerama Dome in Hollywood
when I was just seven years old.
A birch bark canoe skimming
across a mirrored lake
guided by a man who
knows he's free,
living by his wits,
answering to no one.
Whatever we see,
the West has a power
like nowhere else
to fire the imagination
and stir the soul.
But if we choose to
look a little closer,
we can see beyond these images
to another kind of story,
of people who come
to make a home
no matter who's already there,
of a nation that claims
an entire continent
no matter what the cost,
and of a land that
shows us bounty,
yet all too often
gives us blood.
These stories will captivate us,
inspire us, and shock us.
And that's why we
have to tell them.
Because though the United
States was founded in the East,
the country we know today
was forged in the West.
[bright piano music]
- People live on myths,
and the myths that really stick
in the American experience
are the myths of the West.
[gun fires]
[hooves thudding]
The mountains were taller.
The deserts were harsher.
The snows were deeper.
- American West conjures wonder,
possibility, opportunity.
- The figure of
the mountain man.
- Notorious outlaws.
- The cowboy.
- The discovery of
gold in California.
- This train of wagons
trailing across the prairie.
- Everybody has a reason
for wanting this land.
- But most of that land
was already occupied.
[dramatic music]
- We have been residents
for more than 10,000 years.
- But this is a clash
of two different ways
of seeing life itself,
fighting for the
future of your homeland
on the one side,
[men yelling]
and fighting for the
destiny of the new republic
on the other side.
[dramatic music]
- The history of the West
is a creation story.
It's the creation of what we
think of as modern America.
- The West is a place
where anything is possible.
It is the essence of
the American dream.
- The core of this is what
are we to be as a nation?
The reckoning is coming.
- The West is this canvas
on which American dreams
become larger than life.
[resolvant music]
[guns firing distantly]
- [Kevin] The final shots
of the Revolutionary War
mark a new era for
Britain's former colonies.
[pensive music]
The United States wins
not only independence,
but a vast tract of new land,
a place they call the West.
- The United States, of
course, when it is founded,
is on the East Coast
and really no farther than
the Appalachian Mountains.
And then in the Treaty of Paris
that settles the
Revolutionary War in 1783,
the British cede
all their holdings
from the East Coast all the
way to the Mississippi River.
The Americans are
euphoric because
they've not only
defeated the British,
but the British have ceded
this enormous sweep of
land in the bargain.
- Most of that land
is not the United
States, in reality.
It was already occupied by
scores of Indian nations
and by millions
of Indian people.
- The suggestion that this
was somehow a wilderness
or an uninhabited virgin land
is one of the most enduring
and troubling fallacies
in American history.
- There were already relatively
stable trade relationships
between the various Indigenous
Nations with the British,
but settlers didn't just
want to trade and leave.
They wanted to stay.
- To live on a piece of land
that's been a dream of people
all over the world forever,
these Anglo-Americans
who've been hemmed in
on the Atlantic side
of the Appalachian,
suddenly the war has been won;
this immense territory
is being granted
to the United States,
and there's a deep desire
to go out into
this fertile land.
- [Kevin] But where so many
settlers see opportunity,
some of the founding
fathers see risk.
- Benjamin Franklin calculated
that the American
population was doubling
roughly once per generation.
If this is the case, and
if most of 'em are farmers,
you gotta double the size
of the United States,
about every generation.
It was the question
for Washington,
"Where are we
gonna expand into?"
- Washington has
two major concerns
with regard to this new land.
The first is about security,
the British were
still on the border.
But the greater risk
is the enthusiasm
of the American
settlers themselves.
They see this as free land,
they don't want to pay for it.
- There's no playbook
for George Washington.
No one had done this before.
He knows that he is setting
a precedent for the future,
and that's an enormous
pressure on him.
I mean, the country's population
is expanding continually,
and the West is so important.
- What he fears is that settlers
are just going to
put down their claims
wherever they want,
and in a willy-nilly
anarchic fashion,
trampling on the interests
of Native Peoples
who are out there,
and creating conflict
with those Native Peoples.
- [Kevin] By the mid 1780s,
armed settlers have
already blazed a trail west
from Virginia into Kentucky,
forcing the Shawnee and the
Delaware off their homeland.
Before they can
push any further,
Congress lays down new laws
to govern the land
above the Ohio River,
and gives this region a name:
The Northwest Territory.
- The year that the
Constitution was written, 1787,
the Northwest Ordinance
is passed by the Congress
and the Northwest
Ordinance has emphatically
that the Americans
have a duty to show
the utmost good faith to
the Indigenous People,
and not to take their lands
without due compensation
and without actual negotiation.
- And so, the idea is for the US
to buy lands from the Indians
and then sell it in
very large chunks
to these, essentially,
aristocrats and
land speculators.
And the theory is this is
gonna work really easily.
George Washington is thinking,
once the Indian tribes
see the superior ways
of white civilization
and agriculture,
they'll immediately take it up.
And so they'll be happy to
just sell those lands to us
and, you know, become
white farmers essentially.
- Early American
capitalists, politicians,
people of means, hope to
petition the government,
get tens of thousands of acres
in order to sell it to
small-time landholders,
understanding that they
don't yet control that land.
- By contrast, many settlers
have a mind of their own.
They want land and
they want it now,
and they want it as
cheaply as possible.
In fact, they want it for free.
- [Kevin] Despite all
of Washington's plans,
some settlers see this new
land as the spoils of war,
and they're not
afraid to take it.
- Many of the people who
come out here are squatters.
They're ahead of the law,
they're ahead of legal right,
but they're not to
be blamed necessarily
because they're fulfilling
their own dream of happiness,
but they go out and they
find a a little clearing
or cut down the trees
to build a farm.
- When people saw the
American West as opportunity,
the Indians were
nowhere in that picture,
except as something to overcome.
What we have to keep
reminding ourselves
is this was their land.
[tense music]
- [Kevin] The Northwest
Territory is already home
to at least 50,000
Native Americans
from more than a dozen tribes,
including the
Delaware, the Shawnee,
the Wyandot, and the Miami.
- So, from the settlement of
the French and Indian War,
all the way through
the American Revolution
and into the 1780s,
this region is embroiled
in an ongoing conflict.
Native Peoples across
the Ohio River Valley
are increasingly incensed
that the American settlers
are flooding into
their homelands.
- For the Indigenous People,
it's an ancestral claim.
For the settlers,
it's free land,
the opportunity to
strike out on one's own.
Both are willing to
fight and to die for it.
- [Kevin] As the late 1780s
bring an onslaught of settlers,
these Native Nations will
not only make a stand.
Miami leader, Little Turtle,
will lead them into war.
- Once the skirmish starts,
it's going to build
until somebody
suffers enough to stop.
[intense music]
[warrior shouts]
[pensive music]
- [Kevin] For centuries,
the thousand-mile Ohio River
has been an artery of
trade and transport,
connecting Native Peoples
of the Great Lakes region
to the Mississippi and beyond.
But after the Revolutionary War,
it becomes a path
to a new future
for Americans seeking land.
[tense energetic music]
- Every year, there are
boats upon boats upon boats
filled with family livestock
floating down the Ohio River.
On the south is the
American side, Kentucky,
where people expect to squat,
find land, and live there.
- [Kevin] By the late 1780s,
the Bluegrass lands of
Kentucky are filling up,
and settlers are pushing north
across the Ohio River
and into Miami territory.
Miami War Chief, Little Turtle,
sees the growing United States
as a dire threat to his people.
- When you're encroached
upon by others,
you have no choice but to
try to defend that space.
I think any nation
understands that.
And so, at the very core,
this was about
defending our right
to be in our homelands.
- Miami people have been living
in what would become
the Northwest Territory
for several centuries
before the 1780s.
The nucleus of Miami life
is a string of villages
that are on the Wabash
River, the Upper Maumee,
going up towards
modern-day Ohio.
- The Miamis are
growing vast corn fields
for as far as you can see,
and harvesting actively
from the wetland
areas of that region.
There are bison even in some
of the woodland
areas at that time.
- [Kevin] Like other Native
Americans across the continent,
the Miami used
controlled burning
to manage game and
enrich the soil.
Their abundant resources
now attract land-hungry settlers
determined to move here,
whether they're welcome or not.
- George Washington
is not someone
who wants to wage war
against Native Americans.
He understands that if you
take the continent by force,
that doesn't comport
with the ideals
of the American Republic.
- Scum is the term he uses
to describe these squatters
who are turning to the
federal government saying,
"You need to clear these
Natives off these lands."
- [Kevin] Land speculators
and congressmen
also demand action.
Washington hands the problem
off to General Arthur St. Clair.
- Arthur St. Clair
is the governor
of the Northwest Territory.
He's a military leader.
He's also a speculator,
a perfect symbol of this
conflict of interest.
He stands to gain by conquering
Native American territory.
- The US has this idea
that it's going to
protect its settlers
over the mountains.
But there's no army to send.
Once the revolution is over,
the continental army
essentially disbands
and defense is gonna be
left to state militias.
- There's 300 or so
soldiers in the US Army.
Now, they have to have
control over a territory
stretching from the Great Lakes
down to the Gulf of Mexico.
That's not gonna work.
[tense music]
[water splashing]
- So, they cobbled together
these various militias
for that whole lot
of formal training
and send them over
the mountains.
And trouble begins.
[intense music]
- [Kevin] In the fall of 1790,
St. Clair orders an attack
on the Miami
capital of Kekionga,
hoping to quell the
raids and force the Miami
into a treaty that
gives up their land.
Little Turtle and allies
from the Shawnee and Delaware
fend off the attack,
routing the militia.
But St. Clair strikes back,
sending Kentucky cavalry
to attack the Miami and
burn down their homes.
[fire crackling]
- The American military
campaigns had a direct objective
of going into the village and
destroying these stored crops,
the goal being to wipe
out their food source
so that they didn't have any
means of surviving the winter.
- [Kevin] Far from
weakening the Miami,
these raids fuel their defiance,
and in the aftermath, Little
Turtle gains a valuable ally,
an American settler
captured eight years
earlier by the Miami
and raised as one of them.
William Wells.
- William Wells is
captured as a young boy
in Kentucky during a raid,
brought into what
we call Myaamionki,
or the Miami country.
- This is a common
occurrence in Kentucky
in this time period.
There are a lot of reasons
why a Myaamia family
would want to take a captive.
One might be to replace
someone who's died
through violence or
through disease perhaps
to fill a gap in the community.
- The story of
frontier is also one of
what we might call
cross fertilization
of these colliding people,
are also being brought together,
and the captivity and
the adoption of Americans
could be seen as
a rather dramatic
and a very poignant
example of that kind
of cultural exchange
between these peoples.
- William Wells,
mother had died,
then his father had been
killed in an Indian ambush.
So he just embraces it in a
way that a 13-year-old could.
[intense music]
- [Kevin] Eight years after
being taken captive himself,
a 21-year-old William Wells
sees his Miami wife
and son kidnapped
by Kentucky raiders in 1791.
- Wells marries Little
Turtle's daughter,
known in English
as Sweet Breeze,
and ends up having
four children,
one of which is a
grandmother of mine.
- [Kevin] Little
Turtle brings Wells
into a growing army of Native
resistance to US expansion,
and begins to unite
the Miami with allies
across the Ohio River
Valley and beyond.
Forging an alliance
to resist settlement
among so many tribes
will be a test
of Little Turtle's
leadership and diplomacy.
- Just as the American
Republic is bringing together
what had formerly been
separate colonies,
so too in the Great Lakes
area emerges a confederation
among previously diverse and
disparate Indian peoples.
- Seven nations from Canada,
six nations from
modern-day New York,
all the nations from
the immediate region
create an effective
military force
that's larger than
any one of the nations
could provide on its own.
- Indigenous Peoples understand
that their futures
are imperiled,
and they begin connecting
with one another,
forming the Northwest
Indian Confederacy
to protect their
homelands and sovereignty.
- The Native Americans
are in a confederacy
unprecedented in their history.
They're well organized,
they're determined to resist.
- It is pretty remarkable,
the ways in which peoples
from across the Ohio country
and the Great Lakes region
are coming together to put forth
a united front against
American expansionism.
- [Kevin] Little
Turtle rises to become
one of the leading war chiefs
of the Northwest Confederacy.
The British also
lend their support
to protect their
North American trade
with Native Nations, and
to halt US expansion.
Washington now sees a
threat to national security
and orders St. Clair to
crush the Confederacy.
- St. Clair pulls together
what you might call the
prototype to the US Army.
And there's some trained
regulars, but not many.
It's this cobbled
together force,
frontiersmen, Kentucky militia,
and others who have
served in the revolution.
- [Kevin] St. Clair wants
to reassure settlers
that the region is safe
by conquering the
Native alliance.
He again targets
the Miami capital,
but this time he leads
the invasion himself.
- Little Turtle has his
scouts tracking St. Clair
the whole time, and
waits for St. Clair
to get to a really
vulnerable spot.
[tense music]
- [Kevin] On November 3rd, 1791,
St. Clair makes camp,
still 50 miles from Kekionga.
But the long march and low pay
have taken their
toll on his men.
A quarter of his 2,000 recruits
have succumbed to
disease or deserted.
Meanwhile, Little Turtle
and other Native leaders
have brought together
1,000 warriors.
Under cover of
darkness, they close in.
[intense music]
- Little Turtle
and his warriors,
he has this entire
camp surrounded
and as these soldiers
are just awakening,
all of a sudden there are
several hundred warriors
running at them,
full-on tomahawks,
muskets, knives, war clubs.
- So, it's a surprise attack.
St. Clair's completely
unprepared for it.
[warriors shouting]
[dramatic music]
[pensive music]
- [Kevin] On the morning
of November 4th, 1791,
Miami War Chief, Little Turtle
leads a confederacy
of Native forces
in a surprise attack on General
Arthur St. Clair's army.
[warriors shouting]
[weapons thudding]
- American military
commanders underestimate
the sophistication
and organization
of Little Turtle and
the Native Confederacy.
They believe that
the Native Americans
are really a chaotic
fighting force.
[warriors shouting]
They are incapable
of modern warfare.
Little Turtle is gonna
prove them deadly wrong.
[intense music]
- [Kevin] Little Turtle
routs the Kentucky militia,
throwing St. Clair's
camp into chaos.
But the American artillery
springs into action.
[cannons and guns firing]
- St. Clair's whole
scheme is kind of based
around the superiority
of this cannon fire.
But Little Turtle brings
in sharp shooters
and they effectively take
out the artillery crew.
And now, St. Clair and the
rest of them are cooked.
- [Kevin] Over three long hours,
St. Clair tries to fend off
a carefully planned
sequence of Indian attacks.
He has three horses
shot from under him,
then flees for his life.
Two thirds of his soldiers
never make it out.
A survivor describes their
freshly scalped heads
as a field of pumpkins.
- St. Clair loses
almost 700 men,
the largest loss
of American troops
to Native Americans
in our history.
- US soldiers, they are
going into territories
with this false notion that,
"Oh, if there are a
few Indians there,
we'll take care of it."
And there's a certain
arrogance to that.
- The Indian warriors go around
stuffing dirt in the mouths
of dead American soldiers.
And I think that's
such a telling moment
because in a sense
what they're saying is,
"You really wanted
this land so badly,
here, taste it, eat it."
And it seems to suggest that
this Indian Confederacy,
as long as it remains united,
is going to be
the lasting entity
north of the Ohio River,
and that the American
Confederation
is the one that's on
the verge of collapse.
- [Kevin] For Little Turtle
and his allies, it's a triumph.
Not only have they wiped
out America's only army,
they've blocked
westward expansion.
And the nation that
claimed its independence
only eight years earlier
now looks vulnerable
to a British takeover.
- The British believe
that the American Republic
is destined to fail, and
they're ready to swoop in
and reclaim parts of their
former imperial domain.
- The British have promised
to vacate the area,
to remove their troops,
and to remove their forts,
but they have not done so.
And they have this sort
of handshake alliance
with the Native Americans,
encouraging Native tribes
to attack white settlers
who have pushed out
onto the frontier.
- We have to remember
the United States
feels threatened all the time
by these imperial forces
circling around
them like sharks.
So it's very important
for Washington
to defeat the tribes
to show the strength
of the United States.
- Every time there's a
setback for the United States,
our reaction is not to
rethink Western policy.
Our reaction is to get more
serious with lethality.
Finally, George Washington says,
"We've got to take enough
force to get this done."
And so he sends Mad
Anthony Wayne out.
- Anthony Wayne is known
widely as "Mad" Anthony Wayne
because of his
famously fiery temper.
But actually, he is
mad for discipline.
He is mad for training
and preparedness.
- [Kevin] Washington
instructs Wayne
to build a training base
near Pittsburgh in 1792
and ready the Republic's
first professional army,
a 2,000-strong force, named the
Legion of the United States.
- Mad Anthony really
puts together a force
that's aimed directly
at reining in
this Northwest Confederacy.
So he trains them at
bayonet use extensively.
- Bayonets are
incredibly effective
in close quarter fighting
and in bayonet charges.
But you have to have troops
that are disciplined.
- He tells them,
"You might think
you're gonna fight the Indians
the way you might fight
the British or whomever.
No, it's not gonna go that way.
It's gonna be
hand-to-hand combat.
However we start, that's
where it's gonna end up."
- And so, the US backtracks
on many of its
revolutionary principles.
To raise an army
requires raising taxes.
This is the creation of an
American fiscal military state,
and it's in response to
Native American power.
[tense music]
- [Kevin] Before ordering troops
into the Northwest Territory,
Washington sends
peace envoys out
to meet with leaders
of the Confederacy.
Meanwhile, Little Turtle
sends William Wells
and other Miami leaders on
their own peace mission,
down the Wabash River
to the frontier trading
town of Vincennes,
to negotiate the release
of Miami captives.
- William Wells
goes to orchestrate
the freedom of his
first wife and child.
He comes to the attention
of American officials
who want Anglo-American
interpreters.
- [Kevin] The US military
commander at Vincennes
agrees to help Wells
get his family back,
but it will take three months.
In the meantime, Wells ventures
across the Ohio
River into Kentucky.
What he sees is a
world transformed.
- When his family had
moved to Kentucky,
it was just frontier.
And now, by this time
in the early 1790s,
it seemed a real town.
- [Kevin] By the early 1790s,
the US population
is four million.
The 74,000 Americans in Kentucky
have eclipsed the 50,000
or so Native Americans
living in the
southern Great Lakes.
And to Wells' surprise,
the settlers are thriving.
- William Wells
observes the growth
of established communities
in that part of the country.
He sees the changes
that are coming.
- The more time Wells
spends in that white world,
the more he sees, one,
how permanent it is,
and two, how numerous are
the American settlers.
And he starts thinking, "We
can keep fighting all our lives
and they can just
keep coming at us.
This is not a happy end."
[tense music]
- For William Wells,
this is a shock.
He has to be
thinking to himself,
"What does this
mean for the Miami?
What does this mean
for Little Turtle?
What does this mean
for me and my family?"
- [Kevin] Wells is
finally reunited
with his captured
Miami wife and son.
To secure their freedom,
he agrees to work
as an interpreter for
the United States,
but first, Wells reports
back on what he's seen.
- It's clear to Little
Turtle at this point
that the Americans
are not gonna stop.
They can't halt this onslaught
of settlers into
their territory.
- Little Turtle is
trying to figure out
how to preserve
the Miami nation.
He wants to keep fighting,
protecting the homeland.
- [Kevin] By late 1792,
President Washington
has made little progress
in his effort to subdue
the Northwest Confederacy.
His new army is
still in training.
In the meantime, he
makes a final effort
to secure Native
lands without a fight.
- So while George Washington
is trying to resolve
the great security crisis
on the western border,
there's another huge crisis
unfolding in the United States,
which we know as the
Whiskey Rebellion.
Basically, thousands of
farmers in Western Pennsylvania
are up in arms about a tax
that's been imposed
on distilled liquors.
And it really looks like,
to George Washington
and his administration,
that they have a
Civil War brewing.
- This is the first major
test of this new presidency.
He has to somehow put
down law and order.
He has to have the taxes
because the debt from
the Revolutionary War
has now reached
unprecedented heights.
He sends the troops.
They put down the rebellion,
and had he not done otherwise,
then there would really
have not been a sense
of whether or not the government
could control its own people.
- Washington is
looking at these wars
against the Ohio Indian
Confederacy and saying,
"Wait a second, there's a
vast expensive manpower here
and a vast loss in blood.
We've gotta find
a different path."
[tense music]
So, they send a team
of negotiators out
to meet with leaders of
the Indian Confederacy
and they basically
sort of say, "Well,
what if we pay you to sort
of cede some lands to us?"
- [Kevin] In spring 1793,
Confederacy leaders from
across the Great Lakes region
hold a grand council and debate
whether to accept the offer.
In the wake of their victory
over St. Clair's army,
they take a hard line.
- Native Americans have
defeated the American army
and successfully
defended their homes,
their people, their crops.
So Little Turtle is
thinking about creating
a lasting peace while Native
Americans have the upper hand.
- The Indigenous People
in that area had managed
to stave off American
interest for a long time,
and their partnership
with the British
also kept Americans
out of there.
- The Indian leaders,
Little Turtle among them,
say, "Money, to us,
is of no value.
Rather than you giving us money,
you should pay
your poor settlers.
You should use the money
to pay them to retreat."
[pensive music]
- [Kevin] The Confederacy
makes a bold proposal,
demanding a permanent
boundary at the Ohio River
with Native Nations on the north
and the United
States on the south.
But the idea is
soundly rejected.
Meanwhile, British
agents offer weapons
and money to the
Indian Confederacy
if they'll keep up the fight.
When the peace talks
finally collapse,
Anthony Wayne gets orders
from a frustrated
President Washington:
"Prepare to attack."
- From Pittsburgh,
Wayne's army moves
down the Ohio River through
the invasion of Miami country,
and they begin cutting,
pulling, and burning corn,
the most immense fields
that Anthony Wayne
has ever seen in
his life, he says.
[suspenseful music]
- [Kevin] Through
the summer of 1794,
Wayne pushes the Legion
deeper into Miami territory,
supplying his troops
through a series of forts.
Meanwhile, Little Turtle and
other Confederacy leaders
struggle to agree
on their next move.
- The timeline is a problem
because Mad Anthony is moving
very slowly and deliberately,
which is part of his strength.
And the gathered warriors
have come from far away.
I mean, even hundreds
of miles away
and they've left their families,
and the warriors are
getting really impatient.
- [Kevin] Against
Little Turtle's advice,
the Shawnee lead an
attack on Fort Recovery,
built by Wayne on the site
of St. Clair's defeat.
First, they take
out the supply lines
with help from British troops,
then they strike
the fort itself.
- The idea of attacking a fort
was antithetical to
Indian ways of war.
The casualties that you would
suffer were unthinkable,
but they're certain
they can win.
[warriors yelling]
[guns firing]
- Part of the Northwest
Confederacy decides
it's time to go ahead and attack
directly on Fort Recovery.
And it just blows them away.
[cannons firing]
- [Kevin] Both sides
lose around 30 men,
but while the US
quickly regroups,
Native morale is shattered.
- The failure to
take Fort Recovery
is the first loss that some
of these Native Americans
have had in several years.
- That ends up being
very demoralizing
for the Northwest
Indian Confederacy.
The warriors start
dispersing, and meanwhile,
Mad Anthony Wayne has
this crushing force
marching towards them.
- [Kevin] After a failed attack
on Fort Recovery in 1794,
the Indian Confederacy
begins to splinter.
Some tribes return
to their homelands,
but the Miami and
others keep fighting.
Little Turtle asks the British
for troops and cannons.
- The British are up in Canada
and they have this
idea to create
what they call an
Indian barrier state,
a big, huge strip of land
held by Indian tribes
as a way, essentially, of
keeping the United States
sort of bottled up
on the East Coast.
- [Kevin] But to
create this zone,
the Confederacy needs
military support.
And while the British agree
to apply gunpowder and food,
they won't commit the
soldiers or artillery
that Little Turtle asks for.
Meanwhile, Mad Anthony Wayne
pushes north from Fort Recovery.
- The Native American
army believes
it can slow the Americans down
while their families
are continuing
to evacuate the region
as it's being burned.
[intense music]
- [Kevin] Little Turtle
and his fellow war chiefs
have just 1,500 men left
to fight Wayne's
2,000-strong army
and 1,600 Kentucky militia.
They take up position a mile
from their British
allies at Fort Miami,
choosing terrain that's
scattered with fallen trees,
a natural barrier
against bayonet charges
and cavalry attacks.
- Wayne has the benefit of
a lot of intelligence coming
about the Confederacy side
and what they're up to.
He hears a report that
the Indians are ready,
preparing for battle.
And part of it is fasting.
- Warriors engage with no food
or water during that time.
And this prepares the
warrior spiritually,
mentally, and physically
to engage in a battle
and have success.
- [Kevin] Wayne
plays a waiting game
as the Native allies
fast for three days.
But just after a storm
hits, he strikes.
[suspenseful music]
- This is a clash of
two different ways
of seeing life itself,
fighting for the destiny
of the new Republic
on the one side,
and fighting for the
future of your homeland
on the other side.
[intense music]
[guns firing]
[warriors yelling]
- This is very
difficult terrain,
but Mad Anthony's trained
his foot soldiers so well
in bayonet warfare and
hand-to-hand combat.
[fighter grunts]
[gun fires]
And that pushes the Indians
out of the fallen timbers.
At that point, then his cavalry
can much more easily
push the Indians back.
- The Native allies are
not willing to accept
mass casualties in pitch battles
and would rather easily
retreat off the battlefield
rather than allow many of
their men to be killed.
- They're in this open field,
with cavalry coming down
on them with thousands
of soldiers.
And so, it ends up
being basically a rout.
[gun fires]
- [Kevin] As their
battle lines collapse,
the Native forces retreat.
Saving themselves
from annihilation,
they run to their British
allies at Fort Miami for help.
- So at this time, a treaty is
actually under negotiations,
it's eventually gonna
be called the Jay Treaty,
between the new United States
and the very powerful and
threatening Great Britain,
principally to get the
British to remove their troops
and to remove their
forts from US territory.
And also to allow a
little more trade.
[intense music]
- The Indians get to Fort
Miami and the gates are locked.
The British commander gets
up on top of the stockade
and shouts over the gate,
"You are painted too
much, my children.
I cannot let you in."
That's the metaphorical
way of saying,
you are too much
into war right now.
You're stirring
things up too much,
because if the British
commander opens the gates,
Mad Anthony is likely
to attack the fort.
- The British commander
is under strict orders
not to provoke and
to engage in a way
that will trigger a war.
- And that's the moment
when this whole
Northwest Confederacy,
I mean, it's literally
like the gates close on it.
- And so now their ally has
left them swinging in the wind,
left them hanging, and
that completes the defeat.
- [Kevin] Five years after
destroying the US army,
the Northwest Confederacy
is now soundly beaten
at Fallen Timbers and
broken up once and for all.
[fighter grunts]
[gun fires]
But a victorious Anthony Wayne
is not finished
with his conquest,
and Little Turtle is now
powerless to stop him.
- Wayne's army burned
the corn fields
and leave Ohio Indians
without a food supply
and starve them into submission.
- This is an apocalyptic
type of scene.
The River Valley is in flames.
There's no food.
People are struggling with,
not the defeat at
Fallen Timbers,
but the disintegration
of their lives.
- So Anthony Wayne takes
another hammer to Miami morale
when he builds a fort, smack dab
in the center of their
capital, Kekionga.
And to add salt to the wound,
Wayne names the fort
after himself, Fort Wayne.
- We called Anthony
Wayne eelaamhsenwa,
which just literally
means "the wind,"
because of the way he
just kind of blew in
and blew over everyone
that was there.
- For many Indigenous leaders,
this is enough to convince them
that violent resistance
is no longer a viable path
to the survival of their people.
- [Kevin] As Wayne
scorches the Earth,
Native leaders push
for peace talks.
They convene at Fort
Greenville in June 1795.
Little Turtle brings in William
Wells as his interpreter.
- They come to surrender
and want to sign a treaty
that surrenders as
little as possible.
And that's Little
Turtle's main objective,
surrendering but in a way
that keeps Myaamia integrity,
keeps Myaamia sovereignty,
keeps Myaamia independence,
with this new, powerful neighbor
that is willing to
go to great lengths
to inflict violence
on his people.
- But they are in a
very weak position,
and so they end up surrendering
huge swaths of territory,
pushing the line of
settlement for the Americans
many, many hundreds of
miles into the interior.
- [Kevin] Little Turtle
is the last Native leader
to agree to the
Greenville Treaty.
As he signs, he declares
he'll also be the
last to break it.
It's completed just six weeks
after Congress approves
the Jay Treaty,
which expels British
forts and troops.
George Washington's goal
of securing the
Northwest Territory
is now complete.
But for Native Americans,
it's just the beginning.
- The Treaty of Greenville opens
most of the Ohio Valley
to white settlement,
but it sets a kind of pattern,
a module, a template, for
what's going to follow.
Land cessions, by
purchase if possible,
by coercion if necessary,
by war, including genocidal war,
if absolutely necessary.
- The Treaty of Greenville
really set in motion
what was a cascade
of 13 treaties,
which caused the
complete dispossession
of homelands for
the Miami people.
- And within just a very
short period of time,
thousands, tens of thousands,
and eventually hundreds
of thousands of people
will pour into this territory,
expanding the United
States quite significantly.
- Miami leaders such
as Little Turtle,
they lived through the
revolutionary world
and found themselves
contemplating a future
in which they might
coexist essentially
with the American Republic.
So, it must have been
incredibly devastating
to see American state
power grow so quickly
and project violence
into this region.
- [Kevin] Little
Turtle dies in 1812.
That same year, the British
back a new Native uprising
to wrest control of the Great
Lakes region back from the US.
Britain and America take
up arms in the war of 1812.
And once again in the
Northwest Territory,
the United States confronts an
Indian alliance and destroys it.
[dramatic music]
- Anglo-American civilization
knows from the beginning,
no matter how much
it wants the West,
that getting it is going to
involve some ruthlessness.
But the fact is, we did it.
We did it as
peacefully as possible
and as ruthlessly as necessary.
- We, today, have to recognize
how green and raw and
new this nation was.
At that moment, the United
States was not a done deal.
It was just barely an idea.
And it figured some
things out really well,
and some things, it did not.
And it, by brute force,
pushed its way west.
[resolvant music]
- The Battle of Fallen Timbers
and the Treaty of Greenville
mark the final defeat
of Little Turtle
and the Northwest Confederacy,
setting what will become
a familiar pattern
of Native resistance
and American conquest.
Nine years later,
President Thomas Jefferson
will double the size
of the United States
with the Louisiana Purchase.
And just as they first crossed
the Appalachian Mountains,
explorers, settlers,
and soldiers
will push the nation
beyond the Mississippi,
seeking their fortunes
in a foreign land
and marching west
with bloody footsteps.