WEBVTT - Ep. 08: Beyond the Earth’s Curve, Mysteries 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:05.520 Following the Louisiana Purchase, American traders to the tribes on 0:00:05.640 --> 0:00:10.719 the Red River inadvertently resolved centuries of precious metal stories 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:14.080 in the Southwest, but their discovery turned out to be 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:18.079 more a boon to global science than an avenue to 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:22.520 personal wealth. I'm Dan Flores, and this is the American West, 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:27.920 brought to you by Velvet Buck. Still in barrel, Velvet 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:31.120 Buck arrives this summer just in time for the season 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:32.120 that calls us home. 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:33.440 A portion of. 0:00:33.440 --> 0:00:38.120 Every bottle supports backcountry hunters and anglers to protect public lands, 0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:57.680 waters and wildlife, enjoy responsibly beyond the Earth's curve mysteries. 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.800 Sometime in the century we're in, maybe even by twenty fifty, 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:14.759 a nation or one of our proliferating private space companies 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:18.400 will fly a drone through the Valumeronaris Canyon on Mars. 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:22.840 Right now, America's NASA is in the lead for that honor, 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:25.720 having successfully put a drone in the air on Mars 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:29.440 and planning to fly one called Dragonfly on a future 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:35.240 mission to Saturn's moon Titan. But whoever explores the Valumeronneris 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:38.399 will have a chance to resolve all kinds of mysteries 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:41.959 about the biggest red rock fissure in our Solar system, 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:46.720 A gorge that both resembles the West's biggest, the Grand Canyon, 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:51.680 but absolutely dwarfs that Arizona Marble in every particular measurement. 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:57.480 Literally an other worldly desert landscape, the Valu Marionnaris truly 0:01:57.640 --> 0:02:01.640 is west of everything. Also a good modern stand in 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:04.960 to help understand the way many explorers and map makers 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:07.600 thought about the American West two hundred years ago. 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:09.320 What's out there? 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:12.920 How will we feel in the close presence of a mystery? 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:17.280 In Mars's case, what kind of emotional reaction will we 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:21.320 experience watching video footage from a drone flying through a 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:26.120 world of soaring red spires and cliffs on an astounding scale? 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:30.639 Is it possible the planet is so small its horizons 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:33.839 will obscure the opposing canyon walls one from the other, 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:38.520 even in a gorge twenty five thousand feet deep? Was 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:42.720 that canyon formed by the biggest flood in Solar System history? 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:46.639 Was their life there then? Is their life there now? 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.480 In the case of the West, in the early eighteen hundreds, 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:56.240 the world was equally uninformed. Could rumors of mountains of 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:59.600 pure salt in the west be believed. Was there really 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:03.280 a single mountain from which waters flowed to the Pacific, 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:07.280 the Arctic, the Gulf. Were native people in the West 0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:10.840 descendants of the lost tribes of Israel? Or did some 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:16.480 possibly migrate from Wales where their elephants unicorns are dragging 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:21.120 like water serpents. There did masses of precious metals lurk 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:24.400 hidden in the mountains or even lie about on the prairie, 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:27.320 waiting for the ambitious or the lucky to cash in 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:31.519 beyond all their dreams. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:36.080 these were all possibilities in the West, which was real 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:46.960 because humans evolved to be curious and to be travelers. Eventually, 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:50.920 we'll answer our questions about Mars. We certainly answered all 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:54.520 the ones I just posed about the American West, But 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:58.680 there's one I wanted to address here more. Particularly, this 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:05.520 mystery spond several frontier generations to imagine easy, unfathomable riches 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:09.920 in the Southwest, aiding a widespread image of America as 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:13.400 a kind of Eden of infinite resources, an idea that 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:17.159 some still hold. It's a story that evokes everything that 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:21.440 excites us about venturing into new worlds and finding things 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:28.800 we absolutely never expected. In the same decades when fascinated 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:33.400 Americans were hearing about a mysterious Western region associated with 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:37.600 early mountain maned John Coulter, a place where mud pots 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:42.120 bubbled and scalding water spewed, or were absorbing the story 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:46.039 of Hue Glasses mauling by a giant bear down on 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:50.719 the southwestern frontier, there was another story remarkable enough to 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:55.080 rival those. In the years between eighteen ten and eighteen 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:59.120 thirty five, versions of it circulated through the saloons of 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:03.920 towns like Natchez, New Orleans, and Nacotish in Louisiana, and 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:10.320 San Antonio and Austin in Texas. Culture's hell became Yellowstone Park, 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:14.000 of course, and the Hugh Glass story would morph into 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:18.799 a modern movie called The Revenant. On the Southwestern Frontier, 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:24.080 the story I'm about to tell, though, eventually faded away. Ultimately, 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:28.120 an Eastern scientist put together what had generated such excitement 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:30.800 in the early eighteen hundreds, but in the West, by 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:39.320 then the story was almost forgotten. John Coulture and Hugh Glass, 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:43.080 like so many other Americans heading into the West, launched 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:47.400 from Saint Louis and traveled up the Missouri River. The 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:50.719 counterpart to Saint Louis on the southern plains was the 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:55.960 old French city of Nacotish in Louisiana, founded in seventeen 0:05:56.080 --> 0:06:00.520 fourteen and the last outposts of supply on the River, 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:04.640 a watercourse that penetrated into the west towards the Rocky 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:10.000 mountains and far distant Santa Fe. For decades, French traders 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:13.880 had followed the Red to reach the Wichita villages several 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:18.600 hundred miles up river. Like the Mandans and the Aricaras 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:22.680 on the Missouri, the Wichitas had built fixed towns as 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:26.560 far up the Red as farming was possible. Catto and 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:30.200 speakers related to the Pawnees and sometimes called by that name, 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:34.960 The Wichitas freely welcomed traders and explorers, as did the 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:40.000 nomadic Comanchee bands in the prairies around them. Now, with 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:44.240 the Louisiana purchase, Americans had taken over possession of the 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:48.719 lower Red used to manipulating the Spanish and French against 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:53.240 one another for Indian affections. The Southern Plains tribes were 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:58.479 intrigued by this new player on the scene. As I 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:02.240 described in the last episode of the American West. Thomas 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:05.599 Jefferson's eighteen oh six attempt to send a Lewis and 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:09.160 Clark type exploration up the Red River had been cut 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:14.800 short by a Spanish force. Simultaneously with that confrontation, words 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:19.480 spread on the frontier that Aaron Burr, Jefferson's vice president, 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:23.720 who had just killed his rival Alexander Hamilton in a duel, 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:28.520 was fleeing the US to the southwest, ostensibly to launch 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:34.360 an American style revolution against the Spanish monarchy. With these provocations, 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:36.960 for several weeks in the winter of eighteen o six 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:41.160 and seven, Spanish and American armies actually circled one another 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:44.560 west of Nacolush in a game of bluff that never 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:49.400 got called. When tensions finally relaxed, Spanish officials in the 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:52.760 colonies of Texas and New Mexico decided that in the 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:57.240 future it would be good to avoid any noisy disturbances 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:01.440 with the Americans. As they put it, that decision allowed 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:08.560 American traders more freedom to penetrate the planes. By the 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:11.480 first decade of the eighteen hundreds, the American foot was 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:15.080 in the door to the southwest, and it was still pushing, 0:08:16.120 --> 0:08:19.560 led by their point man in Nacodish doctor John Sibley, 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:23.240 a new Englander. President Jefferson appointed Indian agent for the 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:27.119 region in eighteen oh five. The Americans had a new plan. 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:33.280 If government expeditions to the west aroused Spanish suspicions, why 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:37.280 not invite potential Indian allies and trade partners like the 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:43.000 Wichitas and Comanches to come to Nakotish instead. Sibley's invitation 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:47.160 produced two great councils in Nacodish with the tribes of 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:51.120 the Southern Plains in the year eighteen oh seven, feasts 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.559 and gift giving kept by forty seven year old Sibley, 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:58.880 wrapping himself in an American flag before the assembled throng, 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:03.520 then wrap the same flag around high ranking warriors from 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:04.600 the western tribes. 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:07.359 Sibley told the tribes. 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:11.040 That the Americans were natives of the same land you are, 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:15.840 in other words, white Indians. For their part, the Comanches 0:09:15.880 --> 0:09:18.320 claim they had so much wealth in the form of 0:09:18.400 --> 0:09:22.160 horses and mules that the animals were to them like grass. 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:25.840 But coming as far as Nakotis to trade, they averred, 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:30.559 was too inconvenient. So Sibley promised that if they would 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:34.800 spurn the Spanish and fly US flags over their villages. 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:38.320 He would send private traders to them in large numbers, 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:43.800 and unlike the Spanish, whose policies forbade arming Indians, the 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:48.400 Americans would freely trade guns, lead, and powder so the 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:53.320 tribes could hunt and prosecute their wars. As Sibley sagely 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:58.800 told President Jefferson, whoever furnishes Indians the best and most 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:02.679 satisfactory trade can always control their politics. 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:10.959 Within a few weeks of these. 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:13.960 Grand councils, in the town of Natchez on the east 0:10:14.000 --> 0:10:18.600 bank of the Mississippi, a Pennsylvania immigrant and hardware store 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:22.400 owner there decided to take Sibley up on this offer 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:26.560 to the tribes. Anthony Glass was around thirty five at 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:30.000 the time, had recently seen his young wife pass away, 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:33.559 and was in a town that swirled with rumors about 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:38.240 the mysterious West. Some books on the Natchez trace the 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:42.360 famed Woodlands trail from Natchez to Kentucky and Tennessee see 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:46.680 Glass's hardware store doubling as a depot for outlaws on 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:51.559 the trace to fence stolen goods. What's more certain about 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:54.920 Glass is that he had watched for years as wealth 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:58.640 of various kinds had flowed from the West into the South. 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:02.760 Early in eighteen o eight, he determined that the time 0:11:02.880 --> 0:11:06.320 was right to set out on a western expedition of 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:10.240 his own. He asked Sibley for a license and secured 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:14.040 two thousand dollars in trade goods for the journey. Sibley 0:11:14.160 --> 0:11:16.839 was delighted enough there is good reason to believe the 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:22.480 Indian agent himself became an investor in the proposition. Unlike 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:25.120 farther north, it was not the pelts of beavers or 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:29.240 muskrats that drew traders to the southern plains. Indian processed 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:32.320 buffalo robes were available, but were too bulky and heavy 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:36.240 for private traders to transport. There were deer skins that 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:39.080 could be made into leather to be sure, and honey 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:43.040 from European bees spreading westward. But as Sibley and his 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:47.079 Comanche contacts had discussed, in the southern West, the primary 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:51.720 tradable wealth consisted of the hundreds of thousands of horses 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:56.440 running wild across the plains. In a later episode, I'll 0:11:56.480 --> 0:12:00.679 tell the fuller story of the little known Western horse trade. 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:04.440 But since the early seventeen nineties, Americans like Philip Nolan 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:07.880 had been driving herds of wild horses that had contrived 0:12:07.880 --> 0:12:10.920 to capture or had acquired in the Indian trade to 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:15.400 furnish stock for the advancing Southern frontier. That live horses 0:12:15.480 --> 0:12:19.040 could walk themselves to market was one of their great attractions. 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:23.960 On the other hand, in the Southwest, there had always 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:28.920 been another possibility for wealth. From the start of European 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:33.200 interest in the region, there had been rumors of precious medals, 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:38.199 even of golden cities. In the fifteen thirties, the shipwrecked 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:42.640 spaniard Cabeza Devaca had said that natives somewhere in Texas 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:46.520 had presented him with bags of well the early editions 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:50.720 of his account called them bags of silver. A few 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:54.360 years after that, having failed to find cities of gold 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:58.880 among the Zunis and Pueblo people, Francisco Coronado and fifty 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:01.400 of his men travel led most of the way across 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:05.679 the southern plains because a clever and manipulative native informant 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:10.360 told them that in Quaverra, the Wichita country, the Indian 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:15.319 leaders wore bracelets of metal. Carnado interpreted that to mean 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:19.400 silver or gold, until in Quavera he met a Wichita 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:24.120 headman wearing a metal necklace. The necklace was made of copper. 0:13:25.440 --> 0:13:28.680 But as the American frontier had advanced past the Mississippi, 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:32.080 these stories did not go away, and in the seventeen 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.360 seventies they were actually joined by a fresh version, this 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:39.000 time from a source that seemed unusually reliable. 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:41.439 Word went out that the. 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:47.319 Highly experienced French trader from Nacanus Athena's day Messiree had 0:13:47.360 --> 0:13:50.120 returned from a foray up the Red River in seventeen 0:13:50.200 --> 0:13:54.760 seventy two with an account of widespread Indian excitement over 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:58.559 what the frenchman heard was a giant mass of silvery 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:03.000 metal out on the disc planes. This mystery was apparently 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:07.320 located somewhere on the Comancheria in Comanche Land, but a 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:11.280 Wichita Indian claimed to be its discoverer. A band of 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:15.120 Pawnees from Nebraska were said to have journeyed hundreds of 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:19.640 miles to see the phenomenon and had proclaimed it a deity. 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:24.280 Perhaps these stories were just misunderstood exaggerations, like those of Cabeza, 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:30.000 Devaka or Coronado. But maybe there was something truly valuable 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:34.760 out there in the vast distances towards the sunset at 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:38.480 the Grand councils in eighteen oh seven. Sibley had naturally 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:41.960 inquired what the Indians knew of such stories. One of 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:44.920 the Comanche headman, who had wrapped himself in the American flag, 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:49.080 knew the correct response to a question like that. Of course, 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:57.120 he said, in their country there was silver or plenty. 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:00.800 It's difficult now to know exactly what Sibilan or Anthony 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.640 Glass believed a journey to the interior might ultimately reveal 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:08.880 in the West, but at the time Orleans Territorial Governor 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:14.680 William Clayburn was highly suspicious Sibley, the governor claimed, accurately, 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:18.840 was supplying Glass with US flags to carry to Indians 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:21.320 whom the Spanish government believed. 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:24.600 To be their subjects. With respect to Glass, who had. 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:28.280 Decided to outfit himself with a military jacket and dress sword, 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:31.760 Clayburn heard that Sibley was now referring to the hardware 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:37.360 store owner as Captain Glass. Of course, Sibley rightly believed 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:41.600 that as Indian agent, he was furthering Jefferson's own policies 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:45.880 towards the Southwest, but it was particularly annoying when Clayburn 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:50.040 further argued to Washington that while Glass portrayed himself as 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:54.000 a horse trader. The Glasses party true intent was to 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:59.440 conduct a silver mine expedition. Whatever else Glass had in 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:02.760 mind when he assembled his outfit and party for an 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:06.320 early July eighteen oh eight departure up the Red River, 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:11.560 he intended to trade. His outfit included sixteen pack horses 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:14.640 to ferry that two thousand dollars in trade goods, along 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:18.800 with a remuda of thirty two additional mounts. His party 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:22.080 was hardly an invading army. There were only eleven of them. 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:26.080 Among them were three pass veterans of the Red River trade, 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:31.400 a mixed blood interpreter Joseph Lucas whose Indian name was Tallapoon, 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:34.400 and a pair of horse traders named John Davis and 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:38.160 William Alexander, who had been among the Wichitas and Comanches 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:39.160 two years earlier. 0:16:40.080 --> 0:16:41.200 The party also. 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:44.400 Included a fifteen year old named Peter Young and a 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:48.280 man named George Shamp who was highly excited about the 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:52.400 silver ore Davis and Alexander claimed to have seen on 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:57.600 their past expeditions. The root Glass plan involved an eastern 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:01.680 detour around the Great Raft, the enormous log jam that 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:05.320 blocked the Red River above Nakaish, and then a crossing 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:08.359 of the Red through a bank side village of newly 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:13.439 immigrated Creek Indians known as Koshatas. At that point they 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:16.680 would fall onto the regular Indian trail that led from 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:18.200 the lower Red. 0:17:17.800 --> 0:17:20.320 To the Wichita towns far up river. 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:25.280 Once Stead looped the Great Raft, their course would be northwesterly, 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:28.920 not intersecting the Red River itself again until they were 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:44.520 nearly to the Wichita villages. Two centuries later. We know 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:47.520 what happened during the eight months Glass and his party 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:50.560 were in the West, what the Red River country was like, 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.919 the specific people they met, what Glass in others experience 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:58.639 living with Indians, and how the Americans reacted to an 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:04.720 astounding mystery. Because of a simple thing, Glass kept a 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:09.119 journal of the trip. In fact, Sibley had insisted that 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:14.080 Glass regularly put down the details of his journey. As 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:17.040 a store owner. Glass was literate, and there's a good 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:19.680 chance few, if any of the rest of the party were. 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:24.600 Glass's journal then is a kind of time travel window 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:28.679 into how the West struck this group of travelers into 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:33.240 the unknown. Like most people who journeyed across the West 0:18:33.280 --> 0:18:37.000 in those days, Glasses party intended to live off the land, 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:41.360 but following an ancient Indian trail did not necessarily make 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:44.920 that easy. There was almost no wildlife in the vicinity 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:47.439 of the Kashata village on the Red and with a 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.280 party of Catto Indians ahead of them on the trace 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:55.640 through Northeast Texas, deer and other animals were spooked. Three 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:59.320 weeks of travel, however, gradually brought the party out of 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:02.879 the pinewood and into the tall grass prairies at the 0:19:03.000 --> 0:19:06.440 edge of the Great Plains. The whole country was now 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:11.840 becoming a gently rolling parkland populated with brand new creatures 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:17.119 prairie chickens, wild horses, and prairie dogs, all the first 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:21.080 Glass had ever seen. Within a month's travel, they were 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:25.879 north of present Dallas, surrounded by great numbers of wild horses, 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:32.240 as Glass put it, and feasting daily on fresh buffalo glasses. 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:34.480 Party crossed to the north side of the Red River 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:39.440 on August eighth. He found the country remarkably pleasant, as 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:43.359 he said, with herds of bison in sight everywhere. They looked, 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:47.400 deer as tame as domestic stop since no one bothered 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:50.800 to hunt them, and the Wichita towns now only fifty 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:54.639 miles up River. Three days later, a large party of 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:58.359 well mounted Indians escorted the Americans into their villages. A 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:01.280 trio of town's arrayed on both banks of the Red 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:05.800 River in a setting Glass described as beautiful, the land 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:09.800 of first quality, he said, with excellent abundant springs of water. 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:15.119 Like the Mandans and Ricaras on the Missouri. These divisions 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:19.040 of the Wichitas were agricultural people, who Glass soon realized 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:23.879 grew large quantities of corn, beans, pumpkins, and melons, so 0:20:24.000 --> 0:20:26.600 they had a surplus to trade for meat with their 0:20:26.640 --> 0:20:31.080 buffalo hunting allies, the Comanches. Their towns were made up 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:35.280 of framed thatched houses, as Glass put it, in the 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:38.439 form of a sugar loaf seventy or eighty feet in 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:42.520 diameter at the base and thirty or forty feet high. 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:45.440 Each of the towns had a civil chief, but there 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:49.680 was a presiding grand chief, a waha Kai or great bear, 0:20:50.080 --> 0:20:54.320 who struck Glass as about fifty years old. When Glass 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:58.359 delivered his speech to the assembled tribe extolling American friendship, 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:02.440 it was clear Awa was the first personality among them, 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:08.360 as responsible as Sibley for making glasses expedition possible. That 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:13.639 reality brought immediate rewards. The chief is in our mess, 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:17.680 Glass confided in his journal, and we want for nothing 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:22.560 the town affords and live in plenty. Glass and most 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:24.760 of his men spent the rest of August and half 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:29.720 of September trading for Indian horses and marveling at Wichita culture. 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:33.400 At one point they watched as mounted bow wielding Wichita 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:37.159 hunters killed every last animal from a herd of forty 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:40.560 one buffalo. They also formed a good sense of why 0:21:40.560 --> 0:21:44.160 the Wichitas and Comanches were so eager to trade for firearms. 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:48.280 On three different occasions, Glass woke to discover that an 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:52.120 enemy of the Wichitas, the Osages, had raided the villages 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:55.560 and stolen horses from their communal herds, including many of 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:59.200 the ones he had only just bought. In the third instance, 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:02.920 all lies with astonishment and fury that an Osage raider 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:06.639 was riding what he called a remarkable paint horse that 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:10.520 used to be my own riding horse. The o Sages 0:22:10.520 --> 0:22:13.399 were well supplied with guns from American traders out of 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:17.600 Saint Louis, but when the Wichitas pursued the raiders, only 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:21.520 a third of the Wichita party could muster firearms of 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:25.600 any kind. In the weeks just before the Americans had arrived, 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:29.520 Glass learned the Osages had made off with five hundred 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:34.639 Wichita horses in broad daylight. The raiders were so well 0:22:34.800 --> 0:22:40.040 armed the Witchitals had merely watched in sullen silence, unable 0:22:40.080 --> 0:22:42.280 to raise any resistance. 0:22:41.680 --> 0:22:45.760 To the outrage. 0:22:45.920 --> 0:22:49.280 While Alexander and Davis had now departed for a camp 0:22:49.280 --> 0:22:53.720 of Comanches they knew from prior trips West Glass had 0:22:53.840 --> 0:22:57.880 other things on his mind. For one thing, he had 0:22:57.920 --> 0:23:02.359 made friends among the Wichitas, specifically with an Indian couple, 0:23:02.760 --> 0:23:07.879 a highly distinguished warrior named Tatsuk, a brave, subtle, and 0:23:08.000 --> 0:23:11.840 intrepid man, Glass said, who in fact was a Spaniard 0:23:12.280 --> 0:23:16.159 captured as a child and raised as an Indian, and 0:23:16.280 --> 0:23:21.040 along with his wife, who Glass described as a Pawnee woman, 0:23:21.640 --> 0:23:26.360 just as remarkable for her address and intrigue. And Glass 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:29.960 was discovering he was living among a people famous for 0:23:30.040 --> 0:23:36.119 their sexual liberation. The Wichitas are great libertines, both men 0:23:36.200 --> 0:23:40.159 and women, the American wrote, not addicted to jealousy, and 0:23:40.280 --> 0:23:42.920 nothing is more common than for a man to loan 0:23:43.440 --> 0:23:47.720 or hire out his wife, particularly to strangers who visit 0:23:47.800 --> 0:23:52.719 the nation. As Glass confessed in his journal, this couple 0:23:52.880 --> 0:23:57.880 became my most intimate acquaintance. It seems to have been 0:23:57.920 --> 0:24:01.919 these friends. Glass began to interrogate about the mystery that 0:24:02.000 --> 0:24:06.760 had obviously played some role in launching his expedition. On 0:24:06.840 --> 0:24:11.320 September eighteenth and nineteenth, he confided in his journal that 0:24:11.359 --> 0:24:15.199 he had been informed of a remarkable piece of metal 0:24:15.640 --> 0:24:19.760 some days journey distant to the southward on the waters 0:24:19.880 --> 0:24:21.120 of River Brazos. 0:24:22.240 --> 0:24:24.360 Later, he wrote, hearing more of. 0:24:24.320 --> 0:24:28.080 This singular metal, to which they attributed singular virtues and 0:24:28.280 --> 0:24:32.439 curing diseases, I resolved to obtain permission to see it 0:24:32.560 --> 0:24:35.280 if I could, and proposed to them to go with me. 0:24:38.320 --> 0:24:40.400 While they had known about this mystery for at least 0:24:40.480 --> 0:24:44.280 four decades, the Red River tribes had never allowed a 0:24:44.359 --> 0:24:48.680 white man to lay eyes on it. Various wichitas Glass 0:24:48.680 --> 0:24:51.840 approached with his hope to see the object very likely 0:24:51.920 --> 0:24:57.000 the headman Awagkai, were resolute in their refusal. So Glass 0:24:57.040 --> 0:25:00.800 turned to the couple he had befriended, and ultimately elicited 0:25:00.800 --> 0:25:04.000 from them a promise to show him the tantalizing mystery. 0:25:04.880 --> 0:25:07.959 Scribbling in his journal by firelight, he put his hopes 0:25:08.080 --> 0:25:12.440 this way, the more I heard about the object, the 0:25:12.440 --> 0:25:16.439 more my anxiety was increased, suspecting from their account of 0:25:16.440 --> 0:25:21.399 it and great veneration for it, it might be platina, platinum, 0:25:21.960 --> 0:25:26.600 or something of great value. Two weeks later, on October 0:25:27.240 --> 0:25:30.640 of eighteen oh eight, Glass and a party of Wichita's 0:25:30.680 --> 0:25:35.120 that included his new friend Tatasuk, the grand chief Owa Kai, 0:25:35.640 --> 0:25:39.600 and the Wichita warrior who had found the object decades earlier, 0:25:40.119 --> 0:25:43.840 crossed the Red River and headed in a southwesterly direction 0:25:44.119 --> 0:25:48.120 towards a Comanche village in this country. 0:25:48.240 --> 0:25:50.200 Tatasuk told him they would. 0:25:49.960 --> 0:25:53.920 Find the mysterious mass that had now become an obsession 0:25:54.000 --> 0:25:57.960 for Glass and his men. In the Comanche village, things 0:25:57.960 --> 0:26:02.520 at first did not go well. Leaders objected the mystery, 0:26:02.600 --> 0:26:07.600 after all, was on their land. After some altercation, Glass wrote, 0:26:08.080 --> 0:26:10.640 it was finally agreed that if it should turn out 0:26:10.680 --> 0:26:14.239 to be of considerable value, what it brought should be 0:26:14.280 --> 0:26:19.080 divided between both Comanches and Wichitas. But at that point 0:26:19.119 --> 0:26:24.080 the mystery's original discoverer was overcome with doubt, and I 0:26:24.280 --> 0:26:27.639 was obliged to flatter and bribe him to go on, 0:26:28.000 --> 0:26:34.000 Glass confessed. Here is how Glass described the remarkable events 0:26:34.040 --> 0:26:40.479 that culminated on October fourteenth, eighteen oh eight. Our whole 0:26:40.560 --> 0:26:44.919 party now became very numerous, containing of men and women 0:26:45.000 --> 0:26:49.400 and children, near one thousand souls and three times that 0:26:49.520 --> 0:26:53.840 number of horses and mules. Moving slowly on to the west, 0:26:54.040 --> 0:26:58.119 crossing the River Brazos, about fifty miles, we approached the 0:26:58.160 --> 0:27:03.240 place where the metal was, the Indians observing considerable ceremony 0:27:03.320 --> 0:27:08.800 as they approached. As they neared the phenomenon across open prairie, 0:27:09.000 --> 0:27:12.480 what the Americans first saw was a wide variety of 0:27:12.600 --> 0:27:15.959 native offerings surrounding the object in every direction. 0:27:16.640 --> 0:27:17.800 At the center of the. 0:27:17.680 --> 0:27:22.240 Pipes, beads, and bags of pollen, their eyes fell on 0:27:22.359 --> 0:27:26.919 a dimpled, blackish metal object resting on the surface of 0:27:26.960 --> 0:27:31.159 the ground and balanced on its heaviest end. It was 0:27:31.320 --> 0:27:37.480 roughly four feet tall by two feet wide, and massively heavy. 0:27:38.000 --> 0:27:43.240 The Indians were reverent. The Americans mystified a magnet glass 0:27:43.240 --> 0:27:46.280 had brought along showed an attraction to the object, but 0:27:46.359 --> 0:27:49.480 they could see no rust on it anywhere it could 0:27:49.520 --> 0:27:52.960 be indented. It was malleable enough for the Indians to 0:27:53.040 --> 0:27:56.879 fashion jewelry and arrowpoints from it, and it peeled like 0:27:56.960 --> 0:28:01.440 a bell when struck rubbing, it produced a brilliant polish, 0:28:01.800 --> 0:28:04.639 and it gave off sparks when struck with a flint. 0:28:05.480 --> 0:28:09.560 But it was untarnished, which meant it could not be 0:28:09.680 --> 0:28:11.359 a giant nugget of silver. 0:28:12.280 --> 0:28:15.159 But what then? In wonder? 0:28:15.359 --> 0:28:19.200