American Experience - Season 21 (2009)

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In March of 1621, in what is now southeastern Massachusetts, Massasoit (actor Marcos Akiaten, Chiricauha Apache), the leading sachem of the Wampanoag, sat down to negotiate with a ragged group of English colonists. Hungry, dirty, and sick, the pale-skinned foreigners were struggling to stay alive; they were in desperate need of native help. Massasoit faced problems of his own. His people had lately been decimated by unexplained sickness, leaving them vulnerable to the rival Narragansett to the west. The Wampanoag sachem calculated that a tactical alliance with the ...

Each of the episodes focuses on important historical events and concludes with a short contemporary story that links the past to the present.

The Cherokee would call it Nu-No-Du-Na Tlo-Hi-Lu, "The Trail Where They Cried." On May 26, 1838, federal troops forced thousands of Cherokee from their homes in the Southeastern United States, driving them toward Indian Territory in Eastern Oklahoma. More than 4,000 died of disease and starvation along the way. For years the Cherokee had resisted removal from their land in every way they knew. Convinced that white America rejected Native Americans because they were "savages," Cherokee leaders established a republic with a European-style legislature and legal system. ...

In February of 1909, the indomitable Chiricahua Apache warrior and war shaman Geronimo lay on his deathbed. He summoned his nephew to his side, whispering, "I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive." It was an admission of regret from a man whose insistent pursuit of military resistance in the face of overwhelming odds confounded not only his Mexican and American enemies, but many of his fellow Apaches as well. Born around 1820, Geronimo grew into a leading warrior and healer. But after his tribe was relocated to an Arizona ...

On the night of February 27, 1973, fifty-four cars, horns blaring, rolled into a small hamlet on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Within hours, some 200 Oglala Lakota and American Indian Movement activists had seized the few major buildings in town and police had cordoned off the area. The occupation of Wounded Knee had begun. The protesters were demanding redress for grievances-some going back more than 100 years-and the expulsion of Pine Ridge tribal leader Dick Wilson, who governed the reservation through corruption and intimidation. In Wounded Knee, the gripping...

The chronicle, which features home movies, and photos, includes patriarch Joseph Kennedy's business and political dealings, his 1960 presidential election and the tragic 1968 campaign, as well as Edward M. Kennedy's failed 1980 bid.