Before Wyoming: The West in 1776 | Full Documentary
Video from Wyoming PBS
Before Wyoming: The West in 1776 | Full Documentary
"In 1776, while the American Revolution unfolded on the East Coast, a different kind of revolution was reshaping the American West — a place mapmakers simply labeled "Parts Unknown."
BEFORE WYOMING: THE WEST IN 1776 uncovers this forgotten chapter of American history. As the United States marked its founding, Native American communities across the Plains and Rockies were navigating an upheaval of their own: the arrival of horses, guns, and disease — decades before Lewis & Clark set out, and half a century before wagon trains reached the Oregon Trail.
Working alongside historians, archaeologists, and descendants of the Eastern Shoshone and other tribes, the documentary follows the search for physical traces of that world — from a tiny 18th-century trade bead from Venice unearthed in the desert, evidence of a trans-continental Native trade network, to the memories still carried by tribal elders today. What emerges is a story of mobile, multilingual communities, rich trade and political alliances, and rapid adaptation to forces that would remake the continent — all unfolding at the exact moment the Declaration of Independence referred to Native peoples only in passing, as "merciless Indian savages."
On the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, this film enlarges the American story to include the people and events long reduced to a footnote." from the video introduction
Comments