Adam Ruins Everything (2015) s02e18 Episode Script

1 (narrator) Welcome back to another exciting journey into the pages of our past.
Today we visit the Native Americans and I'll be sharing a story that no one will argue or find fault with.
Okay? Anyone? Adam Conover, perhaps? Speak now or forever shut up! Good.
Now on with my show.
For thousands of years these simple people lived in harmony with nature.
That is until the arrival of the Plymouth Pilgrims who brought civilization to this wild land, starting with the first Thanksgiving in 1621.
(Adam) Uh, that's not quite (narrator) Dag gummit! No! I'm finishing my intro.
After a long journey across the Atlantic, the Pilgrims settled a harsh wilderness.
(saw buzzing) There they met the friendly Native Americans who, with the help of the English-speaking Squanto, taught them to plant corn.
We are friends.
And friends, this is corn.
(all exclaiming) (narrator) In thanks, the Pilgrims invited the Native Americans to a feast, one that we still celebrate to this day.
Actually, that's not how any of this went down.
(narrator) Aarrrrhhhh! You have a problem with how I'm telling the story of the first Thanksgiving? Not one problem.
Many problems.
In fact, your entire approach to Native American history is totally wrong.
(narrator) That's a big friggin' statement.
With big friggin' facts to back it up.
I'm Adam Conover and this is "Reanimated History.
" (screams) (horse neighing) (narrator) Okay, you talking corn husk.
Everyone knows the story of the first Thanksgiving.
The Pilgrims came to the New World on the Mayflower seeking religious freedom and they broke bread with the friendly Native Americans.
It's sweet and it's simple.
And that's why we force adorable grade-schoolers to reenact it every year.
And almost none of it is true.
First of all, you have the dinner guests all wrong.
(narrator) Oh, are you saying the guests weren't Native Americans? They weren't generic Native Americans, they were members of a specific group, the Wampanoag, and a majority of the people on the Mayflower weren't Pilgrims.
Only a third of the passengers were seeking religious tolerance.
The rest came for economic opportunity.
I'm here for the cash, baby.
Gonna buy a solid gold buckle for my hat.
Well, who doesn't love cash? Cash rules the world.
Heretics.
(narrator) Huh, did not know that.
Well, whatever the reason, the industrious settlers came to an empty wilderness and built the town of Plymouth with their bare hands.
Far from it! The settlers actually built Plymouth on top of an abandoned Patuxet village that had been wiped out by disease.
(narrator) Wait, what? (Adam) As a result, most of the work had been done for them.
Patuxet already had cleared fields, fresh water, and pre-built homes.
We are super unprepared for this whole settling thing, so we really need a place that's, uh, move-in ready.
This abandoned village is priced to sell, and that price is zero.
Eh, Pilgrims can't be choosers.
(narrator) They took over a dead tribe's village? That's disturbing.
(groaning) Yeah, and they also ate corn and beans the Patuxet people had buried years earlier.
Jackpot! (narrator) Geez, Pilgrims really liked their corn.
Not even gonna boil it first, huh? Hmm, well, they had to survive.
They had no choice, right? But they did have a choice of whether or not they dug up graves.
And according to the settlers' own journals, that's exactly what they did.
Francis, are you seriously writing this down? Keep this shit a secret, man! Hey! Are those bowls? (narrator) Okay, that is awful.
But the settlers weren't all bad, right? They befriended Squanto! That's heartwarming.
(both) Corn! Sorry.
While it's true that Squanto whose real name was Tisquantum helped the settlers, his story is less heartwarming and more heartbreaking.
In 1614, Tisquantum was kidnapped and brought to Europe to be sold into slavery.
It took him years, but he eventually escaped.
He then crisscrossed the Atlantic, picking up English along the way, before finally making it back home.
Finally the nightmare is over.
I'm so happy to be back home in Patuxet.
(narrator) Wait.
Patuxet? Isn't that the same village that No! (Adam) Alone and without his people, Tisquantum was captured by the Wampanoag who put him to use as a translator.
Some English just showed up and we need you to negotiate an alliance, so they'll help us kill our enemies.
So Tisquantum was forced to go to his former village and strike a deal between the two groups.
The Chief says we will trade you corn and corn-know-how if you will help them fight the Narragansett.
Fresh corn that's not buried in the ground?! Count us in.
Hey, boys, we got corn! (whistles) (men) Corn! So, after we murder your enemies, wanna have a little feast or something? Sure, whatever.
(narrator) Wait, that's what led to the first Thanksgiving? The Pilgrims traded their military might for some farming tips from the Wampanoag? (fighting sounds, gunshot, screaming) Yup! (narrator) Ugh, I hope you're happy, Adam.
You just ruined a 400-year-old national holiday.
(Adam) Actually, Thanksgiving has only been a national holiday for 155 years! It wasn't until the woman who wrote "Mary Had A Little Lamb" started sending letters to Abraham Lincoln that Thanksgiving became (narrator) That's enough! I was wrong, okay? Isn't history a lot more complicated and troublesome than you thought? (narrator) On that we can agree.
Well, after all this awfulness, I should tell a happy story.
One of true love.
The story of Pocahontas, which is a Horrifying tale of abuse and exploitation.
(narrator) So you're gonna just keep interrupting me to Tell you the truth? Yup.
I'm very fun at parties.
(narrator) The story of Pocahontas and John Smith is one many of us know from childhood.
A real-life American "Romeo and Juliet.
" Back in the early 17th century, Pocahontas was the mischievous daughter of a powerful chief.
She was meant to marry a warrior named Kocoum (Kocoum grunts) (chuckles) (narrator) but instead she cast off tradition and chose the Englishman John Smith a charming adventurer who had arrived with the Jamestown settlers.
After they fell in love, Pocahontas saved John Smith's life from the wrath of her father.
Get away from my daughter, you European scum! Father, no! Don't harm this sweet man.
I'm very into him! (narrator) Her heroic act of devotion is one we remember to this day.
(Adam) Sure do! But we remember it all wrong.
(narrator) Oh, look, you're a raccoon now.
Hooray.
We prefer to be called Trash Pandas.
And the real story of Pocahontas is way darker than the animated movie.
Let's start at the top.
While it's true that Pocahontas was the daughter of a powerful chief, she would never have been romantically involved with John Smith.
In this New World, I will find not only adventure, but also love! 'Cause when John Smith arrived in Jamestown in 1607, Pocahontas was only ten years old.
(sniffs) Maybe love is, ah, deeper in the woods.
And Pocahontas never saved John Smith's life, 'cause no one was trying to kill him.
(screaming) (Adam) Smith either made the whole thing up or misunderstood a religious ceremony welcoming him to the tribe.
Welcome, friend.
Ah! The violent native seeks to crush me in his bear-like grip! What? No.
Man, this guy is dense.
But the biggest mistake is that John Smith wasn't the hero of this story.
Frankly, he and the British were total jerks.
When the Jamestown settlers first arrived, Chief Powhatan welcomed them and gave them badly needed supplies.
That is, until the autumn of 1608 when a particularly bad harvest meant the Powhatan people didn't have any more to give.
My apologies.
We barely have enough to get our own people through the winter.
(Adam) But the British reaction to this was, uh pretty violent.
(gun clicks) Merry Christmas.
I can't believe I tried to hug you.
(Adam) The British threatened and harassed them so much that Chief Powhatan ended up moving the entire village further from Jamestown just so they'd be left alone.
Ugh, these guys are the worst.
Let's get out of here! Even if I was an adult, I wouldn't marry that jerk.
(Adam) Pocahontas ended up marrying the warrior Kocoum, who she actually liked quite a bit.
You know what I like most about you? You didn't violently threaten my people.
(Adam) Meanwhile, back in Jamestown, John Smith, the intrepid explorer, was lighting his pipe (screams) (Adam) and accidentally blew himself up with gunpowder and had to return to England to recover.
(narrator) What a maroon! So that's the end of the story? Weird.
Nope! From there, things only got worse for Pocahontas.
(narrator) I should've guessed.
(Adam) After John Smith's departure, Pocahontas was kidnapped by another British settler who was also feuding with her father.
You feud with us, we steal your kids.
You know what? I'm gonna say it these people are assholes.
While in captivity, Pocahontas converted to Christianity, learned English, and married a man named John Rolfe.
From the second I saw you ripped from your family and cultural context, I knew you were the one.
I vow to love you always.
And I vow to make the best of the worst possible situation.
That's the British spirit.
(Adam) Then Pocahontas, John Rolfe, and their newborn son went to England on a publicity trip meant to stir up more investment for Jamestown.
Come one, come all to look at John Rolfe and his beautiful native wife! (crowd "ooh" ing) (narrator) Wait, wait, wait, they used a kidnapped woman as a marketing tool?! That's terrible.
Yes.
It was.
And, unfortunately, after this visit to London, Pocahontas died of disease at the age of 21.
She'd never see her home or her people again.
(narrator) How in the world did we get a sweet love story from such a sad tale? (Adam) Well, for that, you can thank that old exploding sleazebag, John Smith.
Because in 1612, he wrote a bestselling account of his adventures that falsely depicted Pocahontas as grown up, beautiful, and into him.
"And after Pocahontas saved my life, "her beautiful adult body embraced me.
"'You're such a hero, you'd never blow yourself up with gunpowder, ' she exclaimed.
" (Adam) This dude also claimed in another book that Pocahontas and 30 other women in her tribe attacked him with a dance and demanded sexual favors.
"And then things started to get really hot.
Oh, yeah, everybody wanted a piece of John Smith.
" (laughing) (narrator) Ugh, what a creep! Creepily influential.
Smith's account became the basis for centuries of mythologizing.
And it was those myths that made their way into the animated movie 350 years later.
Thirty women? Sexual favors? I smell a G-rated children's film! This false, romanticized version became the story of Pocahontas most of us know today, even though it's painted with all the creative liberties of the wind.
(wind whistling) Anyone else hot? (narrator) I can't believe I was retelling that lamewad's crappy narrative.
Adam, allow me to redeem myself.
For our final story, we'll talk about what the Americas were like before the Europeans even arrived.
Were you gonna repeat that old story about how the Americas were wild, empty, and uncivilized? Because that's totally wrong.
Let's get you out of there, little guy.
(narrator) y, you know what, help me out here.
Leave him in there.
(narrator) Before Europeans arrived, the New World was an empty and fertile land.
The small groups of Native Americans there lived simply and only ate what nature provided.