I have crossed the Atlantic to ride the railroads of North America
with my reliable Appletons' Guide.
Published in the late 19th century,
Appletons' General Guide to North America will direct me
to all that's
beautiful, memorable
and striking in the United States.
As I journey across this vast continent,
I'll discover how pioneers and cowboys conquered the West...
..and how the railroads tied this nation together,
helping to create the global superstate of today.
My rail journey along the Upper Mississippi has brought me
to a part of the river where Appletons' says there's
"grandeur and sublimity in every mile.
"It becomes monotonous after a time,
"the eye becoming surfeited with too much beauty."
In my travels around the United States, I've learned that you can't
understand the nation's history or even its psyche without grasping
the geography of its rivers.
With 31 states draining into the Mississippi
and two Canadian provinces, this is the mightiest of all the waterways.
I want to understand how white settlers altered its flow,
supplanted its population, and introduced new customs.
I started my journey in Minnesota in the Twin Cities.
I'm now travelling alongside the Mississippi River
before crossing into Wisconsin at La Crosse.
I'll then head east
towards the shore of Lake Michigan at Milwaukee.
Turning south, I'll spend time in Chicago
and then travel the length of Illinois via Centralia.
I'll rediscover the Mississippi
as I end my journey in Memphis, Tennessee.
Today's leg runs along the river.
First, I'll aim for Red Wing, Minnesota,
to find out about a famous settler storyteller.
I'll learn about the Native Americans
forced off their lands at Winona,
before crossing the river to take in
the Wisconsin city named after
what has become an international sport.
On my travels, I immerse myself in Native American culture...
- How do you like it? - I love it. - Yeah?
..visit an extraordinary wildlife refuge...
Is it a healthy bald eagle colony?
At one point, we had single digits for eagle nests
and now we're up over 300.
..and take a crash course in lacrosse.
That's all right. We've got a helmet for a reason!
Didn't even see it!
My first stop will be Red Wing, which Appletons' tells me is
"beautifully situated on a broad level plain
"at the foot of majestic bluffs.
"A favourite resort in summer
"for hunting, bathing, fishing and sailing."
I want to find out what the place was like
before the tourists arrived,
when the settlers wrestled with raw nature.
Named after a Native American chief, Red Wing is on tribal land.
Like much territory west of the Mississippi,
this area was bought by the United States from France in 1803,
as part of the Louisiana Purchase.
Within 50 years,
white settlers began to arrive in this unknown wilderness.
These were the determined pioneering Americans
whose lives were made famous by the popular children's TV series
Little House On The Prairie.
Many of us grew up watching the show,
which was based on the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
The stories reflect her own settler childhood,
just across the river from here.
Pamela Smith Hill is the author of Laura's biography.
- Hello, Pamela. - Hello. How nice to meet you.
Michael. What sort of life was her father trying to have?
I think he wanted a very...uncomplicated life.
He liked being in the wild. He liked being surrounded by wild animals.
He was a hunter and a trapper
and I think that's a love that he instilled in his daughter, Laura.
Laura's first book, Little House In The Big Woods,
was inspired by the cabin where she was born,
a replica of which stands here today.
It sounds rather desolate for a childhood.
I think so and if you drive out from Pepin today,
it's about a six mile drive
on a windy road and if you think about all the miles and miles
of wood, that makes this cabin seem even more isolated.
You can really get a sense for how alone the family was out here.
So what happened to the family?
The family moved from here outside of Pepin
when Laura was about two years old
and they eventually settled in Indian Territory
on the Osage Diminished Indian Reserve in about 1869.
They lived there for a couple of years and then moved back to Pepin,
and when Laura was about five or six,
she was back here and Little House In The Big Woods is based on her
memories of the second time the family lived there.
Charles Ingalls had this incurable wanderlust,
and he sent the family further west
after a few years here in Pepin.
The family shifted between Wisconsin, Minnesota,
Kansas and South Dakota,
all before Laura was a teenager.
I think her overriding theme is an American family, moving west,
struggling against adversity to find the Promised Land.
But beyond that,
there are themes that deal with courage in the face of adversity,
how to deal with poverty. There's also the sense of Laura growing up.
The family was like thousands of others on this new frontier -
self-sufficient and hard-working people,
setting forth, seeking success.
In Pepin, each year the community celebrates those times
with a festival devoted to Laura.
- Good day. - Good day. That is the darndest instrument I ever saw.
- What is it? - It's a cigar box fiddle.
Something that folks would make in the United States here
if they couldn't afford a nice violin.
- Where did you get this one from? - I made that. - Wow!
That is extraordinary. I mean, it's not exactly a Stradivarius, is it?
No, sir. Not a Stradivarius!
Does that simple life appeal to you at all?
Oh, without the health care and all the doctors and medication
and things, it would have been tough. It was a hard life.
If you cut yourself with your axe, what do you do?
What happens when your wife is delivering a baby and you're out
there all alone in the snow storm?
It was very difficult.
- How do you do? - What is the appeal, do you think, of Laura Ingalls?
Why are these people gathered here to celebrate her?
It's a simple, innocent time.
- And I think all of us need that in life. - A very tough time.
Laura's mother wouldn't have known any different.
She only knew she had to get the meal on the table.
They only knew they had to get the haystack.
They only knew they had to get the crop in.
This is a very enjoyable and also very impressive festival.
There is a genuine enthusiasm
for their local heroine, Laura Ingalls Wilder.
And the tribute is paid in all sorts of ways,
not least by so many people wearing the bonnet.
And the settlers also learned a thing or two
from the Native Americans
who'd known these lands for thousands of years.
Hello.
- Now, what are you offering here? - We're throwing tomahawks.
- We are, are we? - Yes, we are. - All right. And who would have done that?
Native Americans, frontiersmen, hunters.
Any ideas on technique?
Keep your wrists straight, bring it up over your head,
- step into it like you're throwing a ball. - OK.
- Wow! - Perfect!
No, over the top, that one.
Right idea.
Oh, that was a poor one.
Sadly, just beginner's luck!
Returning to Red Wing, I'm picking up the Empire Builder service,
which runs over 2,000 miles across North America.
Today, though, I'm travelling only about 60 miles.
Next stop - Winona, Minnesota. Appletons' says,
"A prosperous little city, one of the most important
"lumber distributed points on the upper Mississippi.
"As a grain shipping point, it ranks amongst the first."
You can be sure that if it was a strategic place for the white man,
it was also precious for the Native American.
The settlers founded Winona in 1851.
And by the end of the century, there were more millionaires per head here
than in any other city in the United States.
The extreme wealth was generated by the lumber and wheat industries
that sprang up on the river.
To find out what happened to that industry, I'm meeting Kurt,
who maintains a wildlife refuge on the Mississippi.
- Hello. - Welcome to the refuge.
- It's wonderful to be here. - It's beautiful weather.
- Great day to get out on the water. - Beautiful spot. Let's go.
All right, hop on.
At over 2,300 miles long,
the Mississippi is the greatest river in North America.
And it teems with wildlife.
Kurt, this is the most beautiful riverscape.
Is this a natural environment we're looking at?
Well, it's a combination of natural and man-influenced landscape here.
The water level is unnaturally high now compared to previous times,
before the lock and dam, because they had to raise the water level
to maintain the navigation channel.
So the mighty Mississippi was not navigable?
It would be subject to extreme water level changes.
There would be dry land here where you couldn't even get one of these
boats through in certain places.
- Who undertook that work? - That was the US Army Corps of Engineers.
They built all the locks and dams
from Saint Louis all the way to Minneapolis-Saint Paul.
In the 1860s,
the Corps cleared the river of debris such as log and tree stumps.
For that heavy-duty work, they used impressive twin-hulled boats
which became known as Uncle Sam's Tooth Pullers
because of their capacity to extract whole trees.
Did the river stand a chance against the railroads?
Apparently it did, cos it's still here and still functioning.
Are you moving freight on the river on the Upper Mississippi today?
Oh, yeah. There's lot of freight going up and down the river today.
It's still a very viable source of transportation.
If we're lucky today, what wildlife might we see?
If we're lucky today, we'll see some pelicans and some bald eagles.
Is it a healthy bald eagle colony?
At one point, we had single digits
for eagle nests on this refuge and now we are over 300.
Use of the river for navigation
takes its toll on vegetation and wildlife.
The winds that blow across these vast stretches of water make it hard
for plants to regenerate.
So as part of the environmental restoration programmes,
the Corps and the Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies have come
in and built these man-made islands to help break-up that fetch.
Trees can grow again and vegetation gets re-established,
so the water is cleared up,
it's not muddy and it continues
the ongoing cycle of vegetation and habitat creation.
The light is wonderful. The colours are beautiful.
The water is still.
We can hear nothing but the sound of our own boat.
- Divine! - Some pelicans up ahead of us. - Yes. I wondered what those
white things were. I thought they were too big to be egrets.
They're pelicans, are they?
One of Kurt's jobs is to check the growth of the vegetation on which
the wildlife depends.
Tool of the trade.
And grab some vegetation.
- Is it this stuff you want to look at? - It is.
Anything under the water there.
Lots of wild celery hanging on that rig. That's a good sign.
So this long leaf right here is wild celery.
That's good. We want to see that.
Favourite duck food for the canvasback.
A sort of spaghetti for ducks.
So the islands are doing their job?
- The islands are doing the job. - And I think I'm looking at a happy man.
Pretty happy, pretty lucky!
The name Mississippi
comes from a Native American word for "great river."
The Dakota Sioux Indians
had lived around Winona since the 17th century.
But settlers were hungry for land
and the US negotiated two treaties with Dakota tribes to buy
all but a fraction of their lands.
The United States broke those agreements and there followed
a century of hatred.
Appletons' perfectly describes
the scenery that I see here around Winona.
"Bluffs with precipitous fronts,
"worn by the weather into most fantastic shapes,
"the river almost filled with islands."
Winona was apparently a young Dakota maiden who loved a young hunter.
But she leapt over the precipice to her death rather than marry the man
of her parents' choice.
The tribes have experienced much suffering.
And today, groups of people gather
to understand the past and to be reconciled.
Today it's the annual Dakota Gathering, a modern-day pow wow.
It's a gorgeous display of colour, dance, and joy.
What we have here is a gathering of many Native American tribes,
but not at all exclusive.
There are lots of non-Native Americans here as well.
And the dancing is not by way of a performance or a display -
it's an invitation to the non-Native Americans to learn about the customs
and to participate, to join in friendship and to heal old wounds.
- Hello, Michael. - Hello.
You can join me in circle in a tribal dance.
- Of course. Thank you. Lead the way. - All right.
- How do you like it? - I love it. - Yeah? Good.
- Not too bad, right? - Not too bad at all.
Despite the treachery of the past,
these days there's a unifying spirit.
Aaron Camacho is the event's president.
- Hello, Aaron. - Hello, how are you?
What a wonderful day.
- Thank you. - How long have you been having these gatherings?
It's the 13th annual gathering.
And what's the idea behind it?
The idea behind it is reconciliation, right?
When they were celebrating the 150th anniversary of, you know,
Minnesota being here, they wanted to have Native Americans come in
and just kind of dress up for them and they realised that that wasn't
quite equitable and so what we decided to do as a city is make sure
that we're representing Native American culture
in an accurate and appropriate way.
What do you think you've achieved?
A lot. If you think about it, in the circle,
there are people of all different nationalities and we were all able
to do this in a peaceful way and everybody was smiling together.
Think about the 1960s, you know?
That wasn't happening.
The hatred lasted for decades.
The United States reneged on the land deal and paid the Dakota
less than a fifth of the agreed price.
It led to the US Dakota War of 1862,
during which 600 civilians and United States soldiers
and up to 100 Dakota Indians were killed,
and a further 38 Dakota were hanged.
To find out more about the bitter legacy,
I want to talk to Danny Seaboy.
Hello. May I tuck in here for a moment?
- Sure. - You've been MC-ing today.
- Congratulations. - Oh, well, I've been doing it for 14 years.
Danny's great-great-grandfather
was a chief who signed one of the treaties.
After 1862 came about,
then a decision was made by Congress
to eliminate the land that we were given along the Minnesota River.
It took a lot of harsh feelings to what happened to us.
So there's uprising.
When we left here, knowing that signing this...
His name, or using his X and witnessed it, that's who he was.
It was for the betterment of the people that he was a chief for.
And he felt very...
betrayed.
Today, despite everything,
Danny wants to get along with his neighbours, whatever their history,
to live happily, to understand each other.
With all that the Native Americans have suffered,
how can you be so big-hearted, so generous?
I guess I've been through a lot. We don't all have the point of hate.
We don't all have a point of revenge.
But if we can make them understand that
we've got to forget this.
Given all that the Native Americans have endured,
I've been struck by the generosity of spirit displayed by their
representatives here today.
But this has been a gathering of people on all sides
who wish to be reconciled. They've thrown a pebble in the water.
And the question is, how far will the ripples spread?
Picking up my journey,
I'm about to leave the state of Minnesota and cross into Wisconsin.
I'll be leaving the train at La Crosse, Wisconsin,
which Appletons' tells me
"is a city on the east bank of the Mississippi,
"where the train crosses over the river
"and follows the West Bank amidst remarkably picturesque scenery."
I shall be intrigued to visit a little city with a sporty name.
'Attention, ladies and gentlemen. We are now approaching
'our next station stop of La Crosse, Wisconsin.'
This had long been a Native American settlement.
French fur traders came here in the late 17th century.
But it was New Yorker Nathan Myrick
who started a trading post here in 1841.
The railroad arrived within 20 years and La Crosse quickly became
an important commercial and transport hub.
And it has strong ties to the sport of lacrosse.
At the University of Wisconsin,
I'm meeting the president of the men's team, Joel Vitrano.
- Hello, Joel. - Hello. - I'm Michael. - Nice to meet you, Michael.
Good to see you. The sport of lacrosse,
how was that invented or discovered?
Well, when the first fur traders came to the area initially,
they saw the Native Americans playing the game.
- The Indians played it the way you do today? - No, not at all. The game was
originally played with upwards of thousands of players at a time.
It was a game for combat. They used it to train and to settle disputes.
So they were hacking away at each other with their sticks?
Correct. It's kind of how the game a little bit today still goes.
We're allowed to hit each other and it's a lot of fun.
Have you any idea how it passed from being a Native American sort of
curiosity to becoming a mainstream sport for white people?
Yeah. In the second half of the 19th century, William George Beers
created a set of rules which was about the same set
of rules for years today.
It remains a very physical sport.
What it is you're allowed to do in lacrosse?
Well, in the sport of lacrosse, we're given lots of equipment.
We're given helmets, shoulder pads, elbow pads and gloves
and our sticks, of course, which allow us to hit each other
from the shoulder pads down, waist up. Anything on the head
is malicious and you get a minute penalty and you have to sit out.
- And you volunteered for the sport? - Yeah. It's really great.
One of the first weeks of volunteering, I got my nose broken.
I think I was hooked ever since!
It's a curious way to get addicted!
Aside from all the violence, the idea of the sticks is to catch,
carry and throw the ball down the field and into your opponent's goal.
Now, I'm rather reluctant to say this, because it sounds really like
a pretty brutal and physical sport but would you mind showing me
- a few pointers? - Definitely. We'll get you a helmet and pads
- and we'll rough you up a little bit. Let's get started. - Sounds...great
It seems like...getting right back to Native American times here.
Going to battle!
- Let's go. - Thank you for that!
- Hello, coach. - How's it going? - I'm Michael.
- Mike, nice to meet you. - Now, I've never played this before.
Give me some basics here.
All right. First, let's start with scooping up the ball off the ground.
So the ball is going to be down.
And you're going to come with two hands towards the ground
and you're going to scoop, just like shovelling snow,
and up to your ear.
Right. Hands well down, stick, come in low, a bit of speed and off.
We could turn you into a pro yet!
Catching wrist, just going to slide up.
- So one hand's right at the top, one hand in the middle. - Gotcha!
- Arms out. - Yeah. - And when it comes in,
- you're going to watch it in and then just give it a go. - OK.
That's all right.
Didn't even see it.
- There you go. - Whoa!
That's all right. We got a helmet for a reason.
Got it. Perfect.
- Ready for the team? - That was nice. Ah...not quite yet.
We do have something I think can handle, though.
- Oh. - We're going to do a face-off. - Oh, face-off. OK. Great, great.
Down!
Get those sticks squared up. Get those sticks squared up. OK.
Set!
Go!
I don't know what I've started here.
Suddenly, the field is populated with screaming people
hurling the ball around. Quite apart from all the physical violence,
the ball moves at the speed of a bullet, or I should say,
a small cannonball.
- There we go. Nice. - You can see at once how the Native Americans
used this for war training. It's the most brutal and vicious game.
They're smashing into each other.
Kill, kill!
While modern-day lacrosse gives us
a mere flavour of the Native American game,
the influence of the tribes is still felt heavily across this area.
The gathering that I attended
brought together Native and non-Native Americans who were
intent on reconciliation.
Even so, probably not many white citizens fully acknowledged
the heritage that is owed to the tribes
but is evident in names like Winona and Mississippi
and in lacrosse - a game which, oddly,
bears a French name.
The river has retained or regained gained its beauty,
despite being a major freight thoroughfare.
And its wildness fosters a nostalgia
for the pioneering days that were chronicled by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
'Next time, I bury myself in a Thanksgiving harvest...'
We're moving a vast number of cranberries!
'..take the plunge in the water park capital of the world...
'..and find out how the railroad
'spread the joy of the greatest show on Earth.'
Here comes the train and there's an elephant trunk sticking out of
one of it. There's a clown sitting on the vestibule of another.