Original subtitles

Support form viewers like you makes this program possible.

Please give to your PBS station.

♪ ♪

(birds chirping)

NARRATOR: The New World isn't new at all.

By the time Columbus arrives in 1492,

this land is home to 100 million people.

♪ ♪

Their ancestral roots stretch back

more than 13,000 years.

They live in hundreds of nations across two continents,

linked by social and cultural networks.

(exhales)

They invent unique systems

of science, art, and writing;

build some of the world's largest cities

aligned to the stars;

till he came here.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Native Americans create another world.

♪ ♪

Then, the Europeans arrive.

♪ ♪

BEAU DICK: They tried their best

to annihilate us completely.

NARRATOR: Native Americans face a deadly crusade to wipe them out.

(chanting)

We're often referred to in the history books

in the past tense,

but we are not dead.

NARRATOR: Today they number 50 million across North and South America.

They maintain deep ties to their long history in this land.

(horse neighs)

JHANE MYERS: I can't walk these same lands and be here where my people were

without trying to acknowledge their existence.

NARRATOR: To fight the forces of conquest,

Native Americans tap 10,000 years of beliefs and traditions.

At the intersection

of modern scholarship and Native knowledge...

(blowing note)

...is a new vision of America

and the people who built it.

This is Native America.

If you have enemies hunting you down,

the Rio Grande Gorge, west of Taos, New Mexico,

is the ideal place to hide.

High mountain cliffs, steep rocky slopes,

and deep valleys covered in scrub brush

make this unwelcoming terrain-- except to bighorn sheep.

But the inhospitable landscape

is why Severin Fowles and Jhane Myers are here.

They are on the trail of a fearsome Native American people

that dominated the American Southwest for centuries

and used this gorge to elude capture.

thousands of people,

and across their lands, tens of thousands of horses.

(horses neighing)

Yet this powerful people are famous for disappearing--

quickly breaking camp

and leaving no sign they were ever there.

(bird calling)

FOWLES: For so many decades, archaeologists have walked over

this landscape and actually never found

any evidence of the Comanche on the ground.

MEYERS: Well, the Comanches, by having the horse,

it made them so mobile.

They were able to just pack up their camp and move.

FOWLES: We just didn't have the eyes to see their traces on the ground.

It took working with the tribe to be able to identify this site

as a center of Comanche activity.

♪ ♪

In the art is something

that changes the history of Native America:

the horse.

You're looking at a swarm of scratches,

but as you look closer, you'll start to pick out

the way all of these horses have been depicted

by these lines that sort of swoop across,

and they're each being ridden by these warriors

with feather headdresses coming out behind.

(horse neighs)

(man calling in Native language)

NARRATOR: Today, the image of Indians on horseback is iconic.

But Native Americans never set eyes on a horse

before the 15th century,

when Europeans bring them to America

as a weapon of conquest.

The Comanche and other Native peoples

adapt the horse as a powerful ally

in the fight to protect their land and way of life.

WOMAN (in Native language):

(chanting, hooves pounding)

(horse neighs)

This rock art tells a story.

This is commemorating an event, a very successful horse raid.

♪ ♪

We're looking at possibly the beginning of our empire

as Comanche people on horseback.

It's just amazing.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The panel is just one of hundreds found in this gorge

created by Jhane's ancestors.

These images and Comanche oral history

are rewriting the story of Native America

in the wake of European colonialism.

With the horse,

the Comanche transform themselves

from small wandering bands on foot

and expert horsemanship,

they dominate everyone in their path

and rule an empire across the American West.

FOWLES: The Comanche didn't merely seek to put up with colonialism.

They wanted to do more than just survive.

They wanted to expand, they wanted to grow,

they wanted to innovate.

They wanted to build a new world.

NARRATOR: And the Comanche are not alone.

(water rushing)

From the mountains in Peru...

(bell rings)

(chanting)

To the forests of California...

♪ ♪

To the plains of the Southwest...

Native peoples fight and survive.

♪ ♪

In the face of genocidal warfare and devastating disease,

how do the Comanche and other Native Americans

keep their beliefs and people alive?

It is the end of nearly a century of Aztec rule.

The Spanish force Aztec workers to destroy their own temple,

on the same site.

NARRATOR: This church marks

the military defeat of the Aztecs,

but it is also the place

where the battle for people's souls begins.

CARRASCO: When the Spaniards came to Mexico,

what they really wanted was spiritual conquest.

They wanted to get inside of the Aztec mind

celebrate the clash and fusion of these two cultures.

(drum tapping)

Aztec beliefs do survive,

and the fight to keep them alive starts here,

with powerful symbolic acts of resistance.

Builders take a stone with the face of an Aztec god

from their temple

and embed it into the church.

CARRASCO: The masons who constructed that church

reutilized Aztec stones in the very foundation and walls

as a way of saying, "Yes, we may be becoming Christians,

"but we're Christians of another sort,

and we still believe in and worship our gods."

NARRATOR: But there is no place for other gods or Native ideas

for the European invaders.

A year after contact, in 1493, the Vatican attacks the Americas

with the "Doctrine of Discovery,"

proclaiming Europeans can take Native lands

and kill or enslave so-called savages

if they don't convert to Catholicism.

♪ ♪

The Spanish pillage gold and riches

for themselves, their monarchs, and the church,

and set out to eradicate thousands of years

of Native beliefs.

CARRASCO: This was the place

where Spaniards set up a school

in order to train the surviving children

of the indigenous nobles

into education of European style.

NARRATOR: A Spanish priest, Friar Bernardino de Sahagún,

takes a unique approach.

He believes the way to destroy Aztec belief

is to first understand it.

He recruits Native artists to write and illustrate

an encyclopedia of Aztec culture.

His intention is to help priests convert Natives,

but the Natives have a different agenda.

(footsteps tapping)

Today, the manuscript is a world away, in Italy.

It's called the Florentine Codex.

♪ ♪

DIANA MAGALONI KERPEL: It's 4,000 pages, perfectly handwritten.

2,000 and more images, dearly painted,

and it has kept its secrets secret

until very recently.

NARRATOR: For art historian Diana Magaloni,

the 12 volumes of the codex

offer a unique firsthand account of Aztec history and culture.

MAGALONI KERPEL: It is a voice that is never heard.

It is not our interpretation of the indigenous people.

It is their voices,

their thoughts on history,

and their point of view.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The Native authors chronicle the Spanish invasion.

♪ ♪

In 1519, Spanish soldiers

bring 11 ships, 500 men, and 13 horses to Mexico.

♪ ♪

They plant the cross

and embark on a campaign of conquest

for God and country.

The Native authors write in Spanish on the left.

On the right, they use their own language, Nahuatl.

When Diana compares the two accounts,

she discovers the Nahuatl tells a very different story.

The Native Nahuatl records in gory detail

a massacre of unarmed Aztecs by Spanish soldiers.

♪ ♪

VOICEOVER (speaking Nahuatl):

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The authors present a sanitized version of the story in Spanish,

but in their native language,

they secretly chronicle the bloody details.

MAGALONI KERPEL: There's subversion in the Florentine Codex,

a very intellectual and potent subversion against colonialism.

NARRATOR: The Aztec artists use their own language

to preserve their history

and subvert the mission of the church and Europeans

by chronicling the savagery of the conquerors.

♪ ♪

(men shouting, swords clashing)

Almost 1,500 miles north, and 150 years later,

the Comanche also leave a firsthand account

of their clash with the Spaniards--

etched in stone

in the Rio Grande Gorge.

♪ ♪

Each panel depicts a scene as if from a movie.

A Comanche tracker follows buffalo to a watering hole.

Warriors defend their village in an action-packed battle.

There's even a classic closing shot:

A Comanche rides off into the sunset.

(horse neighs)

The panel we're heading to is right over here.

NARRATOR: The stories come alive by deciphering the details.

I am tracing the lines

of what looks like the really distinctive style of headdress,

with eagle feathers

coming out the top.

NARRATOR: It's a style worn by the Comanche.

So what we get here is this great battle picture,

with pedestrian warriors

that Native people use to depict a foreigner.

And then what gives us a timestamp

for this panel

is what looks to be a gun.

NARRATOR: The gun is a common European musket,

carried by a conquistador.

MONTGOMERY: We're seeing the first encounter

between the Spanish here, the Comanche,

and the horse.

NARRATOR: The rock art may memorialize a pivotal moment in history...

♪ ♪

a battle in which the Comanche seize the horse.

(people chanting and drumming)

(horse snorts)

(men chanting and drumming)

♪ ♪

WOMAN (in Native language):

(chanting and drumming)

(hooves pounding)

(chanting and drumming)

(chanting and drumming)

FOWLES: They took this agent of imperialism

and entirely turned it around.

They became the most expert horse breeders

in a remarkably fast period of time,

within one generation of being introduced to the horse.

(hooves pounding)

NARRATOR: Before the Comanche got the horse,

they were known by other names, including Numunu, "the people."

Around 1706 was the first reference

of the people that we call today the Comanche.

MORGAN TOSEE: Hup!

ARTERBERRY: The name implies "those who like to fight."

The horse made us more mobile.

You know, it really sealed the identity

of who we are today.

♪ ♪

(Tosee urging horse)

NARRATOR: The Comanches' connection to the horse

continues over generations,

with descendants like Morgan Tosee,

just outside Lawton, Oklahoma.

TOSEE: Get in the pen!

We're about the same two animals come together,

(gate clanks)

Today, Morgan's getting horses ready

to parade in tomorrow's annual Comanche Fair.

TOSEE: Treat them good, and they'll be good to you.

(horse snorts)

(crickets chirping)

We'll breathe in their nose.

They know us from here.

Get used to us and they smell us.

They know who we are.

(crickets chirping)

Well, here's your horses.

Oh, nice.

NARRATOR: Jhane and her son Phillip

attend the fair every year.

TOSEE: Phillip, this is your horse right here,

which you're gonna ride.

His name is Blaze.

Ah, Blaze.

TOSEE: This is your horse, Blue Eyes.

MYERS: Hey, Blue Eyes.

(Phillip and Myers talking softly)

MYERS: Your great-great-great- grandmother

loved riding horses.

When people were driving their cars

into town on Saturday,

she'd put on her buckskin

and get on her Paint Horse

and she'd ride to the town of Apache, Oklahoma.

So just remember that tomorrow when you're in the parade.

Ride with pride.

You're doing something

that our people have been doing

ever since the beginning of our time.

(horse snorts)

NARRATOR: Sharing stories and traditions from generation to generation

binds people and preserves culture

in the face of colonization.

Such seemingly small acts are a strategy of resistance

that spans the continents.

(blows note)

PUMA QUISPE SINGONA: People in the Andes

have been very clever,

in spite of all the conquest and the colonization,

to maintain our traditions

thanks to the process

of interweaving their belief system

with the new belief system coming in.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The Spanish carry their cross and campaign for riches

3,000 miles south,

and in 1533,

defeat the largest empire in pre-Columbian America:

the Inca.

♪ ♪

But high in the Andes,

the conquistadors' quest to wipe out indigenous beliefs fails.

An ancient tradition-- a technological marvel--

survives unbroken to this day.

(people talking softly)

(calling in Quechua)

NARRATOR: Here in Q'eswachaka,

700 people from four villages gather

to build a suspension bridge made entirely from grass.

(man calling)

(rope strains and snaps)

NARRATOR: Each year, the old bridge is cut down.

(crashes)

And the villagers begin weaving a new one

blade by blade.

♪ ♪

The villagers speak Quechua,

once the language of the Inca Empire,

and still spoken today by over eight million people.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

(man calls)

(man talking)

♪ ♪

(calls)

♪ ♪

(men heaving)

♪ ♪

VICTORIANO ARIZAPANA HUAYHUA (speaking Quechua and Spanish):

NARRATOR: Victoriano Arizapana Huayhua is a chakakamayoq,

a traditional leader of the bridge builders.

HUAYHUA (speaking Quechua):

(speaking Quechua)

♪ ♪

(river rushing)

NARRATOR: The three-day ceremony literally bridges the past to the present.

It is still alive and it's not a spirituality,

it's not a religion.

It's a way of life

that we are still living in this way

in all of our communities.

FOWLES: This panel is a really extraordinary one.

What we're looking at are a whole array of armored horses.

You can see the warriors here with the war bonnet flowing.

Right.

The one thing

that we haven't been able to understand,

there's a sort of unusual figure over here.

It seems to be a kind of shield bearer,

standing erect.

NARRATOR: Sev is hoping

Jhane can shed light on a mystery:

Among all these horses, why is one warrior standing?

Well, I think if you take this

and you think about the context

and how Comanches were great horsemen,

when you turn it like this, the figure changes,

and you see that it's another horse and rider.

♪ ♪

Well, that's a...

That really resolves, actually,

a number of inconsistencies in that figure.

The rock art depicts a whirling attack formation.

U.S. cavalry reports the Comanche used this tactic

to wreak havoc among the mounted troops.

This is precisely the kind of circle

that we see in those 19th-century records,

which makes this the earliest evidence we have

of that kind of collective horsemanship.

NARRATOR: From the early 1700s to the mid-1800s,

the Comanche turn the horse against the Europeans

to continuously defeat them in battle.

FOWLES: The Comanche took some of the tricks of the colonizers

and turned them entirely against them.

They did this by virtue of their mastery of the horse

and the kind of equestrian movement that that enabled.

The horse provided an opportunity for the people

to really, you know, raid and leave an area rapidly.

And the horse was an exchange item.

It was currency.

♪ ♪

The Comanche transform the horse

from a weapon of European conquest,

into the foundation of their own military and economic power.

(Tosee urging horse)

NARRATOR: If anyone needed a horse, they had to buy it

from the Comanche.

♪ ♪

FOWLES: They were moving over vast territories,

to engage in a complicated economy

that moved horses, captives, guns

throughout the colonial world.

NARRATOR: In the mid-19th century, 300 years after contact,

and for 75 years after the formation of the United States,

the Comanche carry out raids

nearly as far as Canada and Mexico City.

(horse neighs)

They rule an empire from the Rio Grande into Oklahoma

and from eastern Texas to the Rockies.

(birds chirping)

They earn the title Lords of the Plains.

(horse whinnying)

ARTERBERRY: American Indians are always portrayed

as kind of this simple race of people,

but when you think about the fact that the Comanches

controlled a vast empire,

controlling other tribes and other nations,

even European nations,

you know, that kind of puts it in a different light.

(indistinct chatter)

NARRATOR: Yet today, etchings on the rock are some of the only

physical evidence of their vast empire.

FOWLES: A lot of these squiggly lines.

The Comanche weren't interested in building monuments.

They were interested in commanding routes of movement.

And we see this in the rock art.

This is imagery that is really about

the gestural movement over the rock.

They're moving lightly over the rock

as they moved lightly over the land.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The Comanche's style of art-- with its quick, light gestures--

mirrors the way they live on the land.

(crickets chirping)

And like the Comanche, the Aztec artists

also find a unique way

to encode their beliefs

in the pages of the Florentine Codex--

color.

Diana Magaloni

investigates the scene of the death of Moctezuma,

the emperor who first meets the Spanish.

He was not a human being, he was a god,

and his cape was made out of turquoise

and the feathers of hummingbirds.

They used Maya blue,

this beautiful color that is bright and powerful

and the color of the Caribbean water.

But when they kill him,

his cape has lost the Maya blue, the power.

He is as dark as the dark waters.

He is dead and with his death, his being god is lost.

NARRATOR: The absence of Maya blue evokes the physical death

of Moctezuma as man and spiritual death as a god.

(drumming)

But there is more to the color than meets the eye.

Through chemical analysis,

Diana finds this blue is highly unusual.

16th century painters in Europe make paint

with easily accessible inorganic materials like minerals.

But the Aztec artists create their paint, like blue,

from living things-- orchid stems, parasitic insects,

and extract of Brazil wood.

MAGALONI KERPEL: What they are doing in their paintings

is actually using paints that have power.

They were actually creating images

that had an energy in themselves.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: There are over a thousand images in brilliant color in the codex,

but in the final volume, there are only three.

The death of Moctezuma is one of them.

♪ ♪

The reason why is found in their account

of the fall of the Aztec capital in 1521.

♪ ♪

MAN (speaking Native language):

they bring disease...

♪ ♪

Smallpox, influenza, bubonic plague, malaria,

and many more to which Native Americans

had never been exposed.

The population plummets from 100 million

to less than ten million.

♪ ♪

It is among the largest population losses in history,

as high as World War I and II combined.

♪ ♪

And as the Codex writers

document how their ancestors succumbed to disease in 1521,

they are struck by another deadly pestilence.

KEPLER: While they were doing these books in 1576,

there is this pestilence.

They don't know what it is,

but it's only killing indigenous people.

And so, death starts to take away all the people you know.

You are painting the book and perhaps your mother,

your teacher, your best friend were dying outside.

NARRATOR: The stark, black and white images

are more than just an artistic choice.

The artists, sick and dying, had no way to acquire

the materials to make paint.

KEPLER: What they decided to do is to continue painting,

use very little paint in specific images

while the world around them

was actually disappearing, like, in fact, disappearing.

♪ ♪

Many, many, many died.

NARRATOR: The codex authors fight to preserve their culture

in words and colors.

NARRATOR: In the past, their ancestors

had created cities, temples, statues.

They couldn't do that anymore.

What they had at hand was they were the keepers of knowledge.

And if they would portray that through paintings,

that knowledge will be kept.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Pestilence rips across the Americas.

their horses.

(drums beating)

(men chanting in Native language)

WOMAN (in Native language):

(gunshots, horse whinnying)

(gunshot)

(loud gunshot)

(horse whinnying)

WOMAN (in Native language):

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: After U.S. troops slaughter the Comanche herd,

Quanah Parker, the last free Comanche chief, surrenders.

♪ ♪

The Comanche are forced from their homeland

onto a reservation called Fort Sill.

They become one of the more than 200 Native nations

the U.S. removes from their land.

The original peoples of the Americas

go from living freely across nearly two billion acres

of the continental U.S.

into just 50 million acres of reservations.

Nearly 98% of their territory is taken from them.

That same conquest mentality exists to this day.

As recently as 2005,

the U.S. Supreme Court cited the 15th century

Vatican's Doctrine of Discovery

to deny land rights of the Haudenosaunee,

the people who created the first democracy in America.

TADODAHO SID HILL: For them to use that

in the court of justice,

to us, is exactly what justice isn't.

And we haven't lost those values

and those understandings

that are so ancient.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Native Americans survive devastating disease

and a concerted effort to kill them off.

How do they maintain their communities

in the face of this historical trauma?

♪ ♪

You all come over here with me.

NARRATOR: Hutke Fields is the Principal Chief of the Natchez Nation,

in modern Oklahoma.

FIELDS (speaking Native language):

So I want you guys to follow me.

We'll gather the medicine while they watch the fire.

(speaking Native language):

ALL: (speaking Native language):

(birds chirping)

NARRATOR: Hutke taps into knowledge preserved from the past

to make medicine.

We need some green cedar, so we have to go over this way.

Well, here's one.

Here's another one we need.

Get a little bit of this cedar.

You can get one, yes.

FIELDS: These herbs, and plants, and roots that we use

are important to keeping our people healthy

while they're learning our traditions and customs.

You guys with those branches,

bring them around here and put them by the pot.

There is a resurgence of effort to maintain our customs,

and our traditions, and our languages.

Now I'd like to honor your families.

Hold your arms out.

♪ ♪

(puffs)

♪ ♪

(puffs)

(exhales)

♪ ♪

FIELDS: I am going to offer a prayer and cleansing medicine

so that these kids can continue their interest

in their Native spirituality.

♪ ♪

The whole idea is to keep our relationship

with our earth and our universe strong.

♪ ♪

If you've been doing it that way for 19,000 years,

you ought to continue it.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Ancient medicine-making traditions

are healing the Natchez Nation.

♪ ♪

Other tribes are reviving ancient practices to heal

not just themselves, but also the land.

MAN: Coming in right here.

Right on, close on the edge of the line.

NARRATOR: In Northern California,

the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band are reigniting a tradition

that stretches back millennia.

(fire crackling)

To fix the forest, they burn it.

Valentin Lopez is chairman of the Amah Mutsun.

VALENTIN LOPEZ: Our ancestors burned these lands.

It would generate tremendous seed germination

and seed growth.

And so it would attract animals in

and it would be easier for them to hunt.

NARRATOR: But, for more than a century,

But what happened is the forests are getting overgrown,

certain plants and animals have taken over,

often from other countries, invasive species.

And so the Amah Mutsun,

their practices, like fire,

was a huge part of how they managed this landscape.

NARRATOR: Now, after decades of negotiation,

the Amah Mutsun are burning again.

Creator, we are here.

Please hear our prayer.

(Lopez chanting in Native language, tapping)

LOPEZ: Creator, for thousands of years

our ancestors traditionally burned, Creator,

and so today we have a fire here.

and may those plants provide for the birds, the insects,

the four-legged, and for people themselves, Creator.

(blowing)

We've got a nice, good controlled jump.

You just have to keep your eyes on some of those.

NARRATOR: California firefighters manage the fire,

building what they call a controlled burn.

If you can just maybe give it a blast real quick, please?

Where do you want it? Right up top.

There you go.

HELLER: What we've been learning is the way that

Native American people were taking care of the land

was actually a huge part of driving biodiversity.

♪ ♪

The fire keeps invasive species at bay.

(tapping)

(Lopez chanting in Native language)

LOPEZ: Our people learned by trial and error

and observing the patterns of Mother Nature.

(chanting continues)

They learned about the four seasons

and the traditions and ways.

(chanting continues)

And it was the power of observation

that they acquired their knowledge and passed it on.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Fire is medicine for the land.

♪ ♪

This ancient practice rejuvenates the forest,

and reviving traditions is resurrecting

the Natchez and Amah Mutson people.

♪ ♪

(birds chirping)

Back in the Rio Grande Gorge,

the Comanche are reconnecting with their ancestral land.

Severin Fowles and Jhane Myers

believe they are in the landscape

that forged the Comanche.

Right over here.

NARRATOR: Now, they may have the evidence to prove it:

tipis.

This is a panel, one of many panels up here

that's depicting tipis,

and this is a really excellent example of that.

FOWLES: We're looking at two giant, oversized tipis.

Here we can see the strip of the base of the tipi

down at the bottom, the poles of the interior

rising up all the way to the top,

the smoke flap is open and then the tipi poles at the very top.

MYERS: Beautiful.

we still use the four-pole method that you see here.

Oh, right up here.

MYERS: Yes, that's how we frame the tipis up.

FOWLES: From an archaeological perspective,

it feels like such a strong assertion

of presence in this landscape.

♪ ♪

MYERS: Seeing this place makes me see that my people were here,

this was our land,

probably overlooking the tipis

and an encampment down below with horses.

So it really makes me happy to see this.

NARRATOR: These images raise an incredible possibility.

FOWLES: It's as if the artist was sitting here

looking out upon his horses,

playing in the midst of a big tipi encampment

and then depicting that scene on the rock.

NARRATOR: Sev suspects the etchings depict a Comanche settlement below.

There, Lindsay Montgomery finds stones arranged in circles.

MONTGOMERY: What we're finding here are tipi rings.

and you can kind of walk around it

and see all the stones that have been placed

in this circle here,

which would have been used to hold down the hide for the tipi.

FOWLES: We've seen now a number of images of tipis

scratched onto the rocks,

but here we're now getting actual tangible evidence

of those tipis on the ground.

NARRATOR: The stones reveal where tipis once stood.

FOWLES: This is a lovely one.

This is quite large in fact.

Yeah, it looks about four meters or so,

and then you have the kind of entrance here

facing to the east.

So would they have horses here?

Yeah, so we would imagine horses being kept

in the middle of the tipi encampment.

MYERS: Nice.

♪ ♪

because all of my relatives were here.

They were here before us.

♪ ♪

MYERS: They probably prayed for us and, you know,

prayed that someday we would be here

and our culture would continue.

♪ ♪

MYERS: I can't walk these same lands and be here where my people were

without trying to acknowledge them

and acknowledge their existence.

So I want to offer to the four directions

what I carry with me always.

It's a mixture of tobacco, which takes our prayers

straight up to the creator,

it's a mixture of Indian perfume which grows wild in our country.

♪ ♪

Thank you for praying for me.

(voice breaking): Thank you for praying for my children.

Thank you for having the courage and the strength

to go through everything that you did...

(sniffles)

in order for us to exist and thrive as a people.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: This secluded gorge was once a home

to one of the most powerful people of the Americas.

At their height,

they roamed freely across the American Southwest,

numbering 40,000 people and tens of thousands of horses.

Half of their 15,000 members live around Lawton, Oklahoma.

What was once a reservation

is now the center of the Comanche Nation.

(tapping)

Thousands gather here each year for the Comanche Nation Fair.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Like Jhane and her son Phillip, the people honor traditions

by passing them forward to the next generation.

♪ ♪

MYERS: I know my grandmother is looking down and smiling,

and all the things that she taught me

I've taught my children.

And to be able to wear my outfit today,

it just makes my heart happy.

♪ ♪

I want people to see us and just think, "Oh, my gosh,

"that person is Comanche.

"Those people, they're not historical,

"they're still alive today.

Look, they are thriving."

NARRATOR: And the spirit of the horse

remains at the heart of the Comanche Nation.

When the moon is full, the Comanche believe

those mustangs massacred in the Texas panhandle still run free.

WOMAN (in Native language):

♪ ♪

WOMAN (in Native language):

NARRATOR: The Comanche and Native peoples

across the Americas keep traditions alive

and tap ancient knowledge to ensure their future.

(speaking Native language):

(speaking Native language):

♪ ♪

FIELDS: It was our tribal beliefs,

our customs, traditions, languages

that helped keep us together,

that helped us survive.

NARRATOR: Even the Florentine Codex,

meant to convert indigenous people to Christianity,

ends up preserving Aztec culture.

MAGALONI KERPEL: It is not only preservation,

it is almost like a magical preservation.

Once you inscribe something in a sacred book of time,

it was the belief

things would exist, continue to exist.

♪ ♪

FOWLES: When Europeans first came over to the Americas,

the first thing they did was to take the cross

and plant it in the ground.

And that sense of being able to take

the rituals, the practices, the relationships of one place

and transplant them whole cloth into another landscape,

that's foreign, that's strange.

♪ ♪

For Native peoples,

when you move into a new landscape

you become a new type of person.

You enter into a new kind of religious relationship

with the land.

(exhales)

SINGONA: The spirituality of our Inca ancestors

lives in our way of life.

In the way that we remember where we come from

in order to have a stronger presence in this world.

(blowing horn)

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: When Europeans step onto these shores,

they are blinded by narrow ideas of wealth and religion.

They don't see the richness and true value of Native America.

♪ ♪

Thousands of years of advanced knowledge

built into cities aligned to the sun moon and stars.

♪ ♪

Experimental agriculture producing new foods--

potatoes, corn, and more--

enough to feed a hundred million people.

And radical ideas about governments

that serve the people that will later inspire

the U.S. Constitution.

Native Americans create a way of life

that is both a scientific understanding of nature

and a spiritual quest to find their place within it.

♪ ♪

RONALD WADSWORTH: We were taught to live in balance with nature.

Each individual has tremendous power to change his world.

We are a microcosm of the universe itself,

so how we behave, how we take care of ourselves,

reflects in the earth.

LEIGH KUWANWISIWMA: We today live under one life philosophy

which is principled upon compassion, reciprocity,

stewardship, and really about humility.

♪ ♪

JIM ENOTE: The world lives with us.

We live with it.

♪ ♪

tens of thousands of years ago.

♪ ♪

(eagle screeching)

(chanting in Native language)

♪ ♪

The ideas that built Native America are still here,

alive in the land and the people.

♪ ♪