together a nation on the precipice of disunion. >> watch the full program saturday on 8:00 p.m. eastern, 5:00 p.m. pacific on american history tv. announcer: darius coombs, wampanoag and eastern woodlands director at plimoth patuxet, discusses the culture of the wampanoag people who lived in the plymouth area prior to the arrival of the pilgrims. he explains how they adapted, and how the remaining members, including him, live today. the nantucket historical association hosted this event and they provided the video. mr. coombs: [speaking indigenous language] >> hello? [laughter] mr. coombs: good morning, friends. good morning, richard.

how are you doing today? my name is darius coombs, i am mashpee wampanoag and also have nantucket ties to here. my people have been around this area, massachusetts, for over 12,000 years. as you heard from the last speaker. and we are still here today. ok? now, what i am going to do today is like, wampanoag is a culture of people. one out of over 1000 indigenous cultures going across north america. what makes wampanoag different, from the other 1000, it could be language. it could be diet. it could be the housing we lived in. one common bond we all have is how we think about life in general. we respect all forms of life. be it human life, plant life, animal life. we do not put ourselves above or below that. that is one thing we have all in common.

i do a lot of teaching, right? i ask people, what race do we come from? the human race. right? so we should all respect each other. and that his rule of thumb for my people. like i said, we have been here for 12,000 years. that is me up there, my lovely wife, who teaches language. also right next to me. what i am going to do is i'm going to bring you to a year, 1613, before any major interruption in our culture. ok? i am going to bring you to our new years. you think about our new year's, a lot of people's new year's starts january 1. our new year starts when everything comes to life. now think about it, when does everything come to life? springtime. that is when the birds start chirping. that is when the oak leaf comes out. that just makes sense. everything is new again. on our new year, we thank mother

earth, we think the creator for having another earth, because it -- year, because it is not guaranteed. we do a lot of dancing. we do a lot of feasting. we do a lot of socializing. but once that happens, we know we have to get to work. and these are the types of houses we live in during the summertime. the spring and summer. we live in a single family home during the summer. because we needed our space for planting. these reeds right here are cattails. it is a water plant. maybe on plymouth plantation, same as richard, we have been doing this for years. everything we do at the museum, we do ourselves. so we go out and gather cattails late august and september and we make these in the winter. they will last maybe three to five years. they are waterproof. they have a cup to it, so it acts like a natural funnel. and these houses would hold one

family. it is different from a european family back then. a european family is husband, wife, kids. our family has husband, wife, kids, aunts, grandparents. you're looking at three or four generations inside one house. that is one big thing that was different. so we would have englishmen come into our houses and say, this guy has five wives. maybe, but maybe not. but then again, not realizing what they are looking at. what they are looking at sisters, grandmothers, aunts, so that is what my job is, to break it down what it means for wampanoag people and indigenous cultures. so those of the houses we live in over the summer. and what we do over the summer, now, this is our planting field. everybody loves corn, beans and squash. we call them the three sisters.

who takes care of the field? the woman. the woman i consider to be the givers of life. they also give life to mother earth. so, you look at the planting fields. it has a mound. i don't know if you can see the mound. it is symbolic to a woman's stomach when they give life. when do you plant corn? you have to wait for different signs of nature. once the herring stops to run, you wait until the next new moon. the reason you do it on the new moon, the new moon draws gravity up, so it helps the corn grow. so you plant born, corn takes nitrogen out of the ground, and you plant the beans right next to it. the beans at nitrogen back into the ground. it will wrap around the stalk of the corn. vegetables would represent half to two thirds of the diet.

nantucket, probably a lot more seafood. wampanoag culture makes up a large part of massachusetts. going as far west as worcester, parts of rhode island. all the islands, nantucket, martha's vineyard. let me mention some names to you. because back then we had about 70 wampanoag communities. nantucket sound familiar? sias constant? mattapoisett? pocasset? mashpee? knaufit? these are name places and town names, but they have always been wampanoag communities. ok? and at one time, we numbered over 100,000. today is about 12,000.

so that is a planting field. and what is next -- they are considered to be the givers of life. what do the kids do? what do the kids do during the spring and the summer? this is my daughter right here, one of my daughters. this is her in this picture when she was 11 years old, maybe 10. and that is her younger sister. and what she is doing is picking sumac. sumac, you pick those berries, you boil them, and that has three times as much vitamin c as orange juice does. kids were allowed to be kids. they helped out a little bit, but they had fun. they played games, they went swimming, they had races. they joked around. a person could go through four or five different names in a lifespan. as you would change as a person,

your name was changed to fit who you are. you would not pick the names yourself. we still have medicine people in our community that give us names depending on how we are. let's talk about my daughter. what does the name mean? it means one who lifts up. it is not because she is physically strong and all that, but she wakes up in good mood almost every single day. when she wakes up in a good mood, she raises the house and everybody feels good. so you give the name depending on the person. but kids were given more responsibility as they matured. this is me and my lovely wife. we did a lot of fishing back then. still do today. still big part of the culture. saw a lot of men going ocean fishing, freshwater fishing. a lot of women would get shellfish, mussels, crabs. the biggest fish we would go for -- i am not sure if it was ever

here, but large parts of wampanoag country, any idea what the biggest fish was? that would go in the river and ocean, back and forth? 20, 30 foot in length sometimes. somebody said it, i think. sturgeon. sturgeon. and sturgeon, they are a big fish, right? we go fishing for these fish at nighttime. we had boats that were nine feet, one man boat, to boats big enough to carry 40 men. we have recordings of them being sailed in the nantucket island. not paddled, sailed. we paddled too. we pulled along the shore. when we went for the sturgeon,

we would have torches on the end of our boats. the light of the torchwood attract the sturgeon and they attract theld sturgeon and they would flip over on their bellies and we would spear them. a lot of the time, the fish got bigger than the boat. so you could not put the fish inside the vote, so you would -- boat, so you would drag it to the shore. salmon was another fish. flounder. cod. they are so thick. lobster, not a big deal. we used lobster for fishing bait. times have changed. we had so much lobster -- i'm not saying we did not eat lobster. it was common. go back 100 years ago, lobster was fed to the prisoners in jail. every single day. the prisoners had a big uprising and they said we are sick of this, we don't want no more. [laughter] there was a law made in massachusetts you could only feed lobster to prisoners twice a week.

if you did it more than that, it was considered inhumane. in 1623, governor bradford had a ship come in and said i'm very sorry, this is all the lobster we have for you guys. not a big deal. today, different meaning. we did a lot of fishing during the summer. this is different from the women who give life. that is where we did the majority of the fishing. after harvest time, we think about going inland. we want to go inland, a little bit away from the ocean. i know it is hard to do in nantucket. you get protection from the wind and from the ocean. inland would be half a mile, maybe a mile. these are the houses we lived in. we heard the names for long houses. they are bark covered houses. normally, during the winter,

these houses could be anywhere from 100 foot long, to one of the biggest houses we found -- when we found the footprint of this house, this footprint was found out in worcester. the footprint of this was 300 foot in length -- 320 foot in length and 60 foot with. -- width. i tell kids if you don't know what that means, think of a football field. that is how big the house was. the frames were made out of cedar. ok? the outside bark normally was elm. we don't have those trees around here anymore, so we use tulip poplar today. we used to use white ash. unfortunately you have the bug these days that is wiping out those trees. we will talk about that in a minute. the men did the hunting. like i said, the men were the takers of life. and we had the deer for big game. there was a lot of deer around

here at one time. on the mainland, we go for black bear, moose, elk, for big game. small animals, do you guys like the taste of skunk? anybody? that is a good answer. never tried it. skunk is considered to be a wampanoag delicacy. how do you catch a skunk? very carefully, right? [laughter] you get two boys. one boy would be in front of the skunk distracting him. you get the other boy, sneak up on him from behind, grab his tail and lift him up. in order for a skunk to spray, he has to be on all fours. put pressure on his hind legs, and he will release those distinct glands. in the air, they cannot do that. you have a club, you bang them over the head, then you carefully cut them open and take his stink glands out. you take care because if you puncture the stink glands, you will not be welcome in the community for a while.

i have not tried it, but some elders say you take that gland of a skunk, you break it open and you rub it on your arthritis, and it really works. [laughter] i do not have arthritis yet. they do not sell that in drugstores yet. in the winter, the women do a lot of the weaving. we are known for our weaving. the wampanoag people. our weavers are some of the best in the world. some of their work is in the smithsonian in washington, d.c. there is a woman a relative of mine, wampanoag, and her work is in the smithsonian in d.c. a lot of people say, you guys have string? yeah, we made string. how did we make string? we used different plants. we used milkweed. we use dog weed. we take stalks, pull them out of the ground, open it up, take the inner fibers out.

when the colonizers got here they noticed wampanoag women making string so fast that their eyes could not keep up with them. then we would dye them with different berries and roots for the coloring. we have small bags like you see here, and we also have large bush bags to store vegetables over the winter. this right here is the interior of the house. that is actually all my daughters right there. three out of four. i have four daughters and no boys. that is my oldest daughter, the two sitting on the ground. i want to break out for a second. i want to tell you where these pictures come from. we have worked with scholastic quite a bit over the years. in 2016, they came and said, can we make a video?

and put this video across every third graham classroom across the united states? -- third grade classroom across the united states? sure. we set up a script. he did the colonial side, i did the wampanoag side, and we showed how wampanoag kids lived back then. in the 17th century and before. and it leads up to what they do today. it shows them riding their bikes, playing on the playground, wearing clothes like they do today. that is what kids relate to. they think we are gone. just because we wear different clothing today at times, we are still here. i do a lot of teaching. this video is literally in every third grade classroom in the united states. sometimes i walk into these third grade classes and they are playing the video. it is called the wampanoag way. you can google it. i play the father in it. i am dressed up in 17th-century skin. and when i walked into one classroom, i see a boy watching the video on the screen, he sees me walking in --

[laughter] he said, yo, you are storm's dad. yeah, i am. it was a real moment. inside these houses, we have bedding. we don't sleep on the ground. we have furs and mats on the beds. the houses got really big, round shape, really warm. our houses get to 70 degrees. rule of thumb when you're making the houses, i build them, every 10 feet or so you want to have a fire pit on the inside. that is just to keep you warm during the winter. it is a round shape. you can't really see on the walls, but we have bulrush mats on the walls. you had bark, interior frame, then you have your masks. you have the one-foot gap. because the way the house is shaped like a dome, the heat is going to rise. go down underneath the mats,

force the cold air to the middle, and that keeps the warm air going around in circles. when the europeans got here and went inside of our houses, they said the houses were so warm, they saw native children run outside naked in the winter. and jumping into the snow. so it did get quite warm. we lived like that for thousands of years. we went through that cycle. the following spring, we celebrate new year's again. we needed space for planting. no need for the winter. why not gather back together and be more communal. in a winter community during winter, it holds anywhere from 300 to 3000 people. before disease hits. that was before any major interruption. all right? that was the cycle real quick.

that is 1513. one thing i want to say real quick is you hear the term lost survival for native people. how could i survive back that? well, we have been doing this for 12,000 years. you just don't rollover bed one morning and say, geez, where my going to get food today? there is a system already set up, generations long before, and people knew how to fish. so like i said, we call that 1513. let's move to 1614. there was trading going on. the first european traders that were here was back in 1524. the trades started blooming early 1600's. back in 1614 though, guys, when trading happened, the english, french, dutch, wanted a lot of otter pelts, beaver pelts. that is what the made the hats

in europe out of. but what happened in 1614, there was an english captain. he came down the coast. remember this date, 1614. he came down the coast and he went to an area called plymouth today. in what we call patuxet. there was a thriving wampanoag community, probably over 1000 people. that is how you describe yourself back then. if you are traveling to patuxet and you said what are you, they would probably not say wampanoag. they would expect you to know this is wampanoag country. they would describe which wampanoag speaking community therefrom. they would say i am patuxet, what are you? but when thomas came to the patuxet, he took 19 patuxet slaves. a lot of people think african-americans when they think of slavery. this happened to our people, too.

this is six years before the pilgrims arrived. he took 19 patuxet, went down to the cape, took eight more. sold from there, the remainder was sold to england. one of those guys sold to england was squanto. have you heard of squanto? he lived in england with a merchant named john sweeney. he lived there for five years. he gained status. he learned a lot about english culture. he knew how to speak english fluently over those five years. but what happened to squanto, there was a wealthy man over there who is funding a lot of these trips, asking who is from this area that was called plimoth patuxet. they said squanto is. where is he? he is up in newfoundland. go get him. i want to do another adventure. so he sends thomas to pick up

squanto. mind you, this is 1619. almost five years. he has not seen his home since 1614. he's picked up in newfoundland in 1619 by thomas. they come down the coast, stop at mohegan island off of maine, pick up a sagamore, a chief in his own language. he knew how to speak english, knew a lot of the english captains back then by name. he dealt with a lot of traders prior. as they were going down the coast in 1619, they saw something extremely devastating. the most devastating thing that ever happened to our people. disease. there was a major epidemic that happen between 1616 and 1618, 1619, when squanto was in england. this plague, the skin turned yellow, people got open sores on

their bodies, and they died within two or three days once they got it. it wiped out the native pop ulation all along the coast. anywhere from 70% to 80% were wiped out. that plague did not affect a lot of people on the islands. like nantucket, the vineyards. because it is hard for disease to go over water. that is why some people were protected from the plague. but what we know about the plague, hepatitis, ok, skin turning yellow, open sores. disease control came out 10 years ago and they believed the french trade ships coming over, and they had rats on these trade ships. and the feces of the rats get into the water system. causes an infectious liver disease. that is what the theory is now. i always say this every time i talk. you can put whatever name you

want on it, it does not matter to me. what i do know is it was the most devastating thing that ever happened to our people. period. so as he is coming down the coast with squanto, they come to patuxet. they find out patuxet was pretty much devastated. imagine that? squanto coming back home, finds out all his people are dead. is that going to change you as a person? i think so. they end up going to the vineyard. there was a leader in the vineyard, he was also taken over to england. he made it back, though. how he made it back was in 1614, they were asking him too, is there gold on the island you come from? he was a chief. he was not dumb. he started thinking, yeah, there is gold.

if you bring me back home, i will tell you where the gold is at. in 1614, they brought him back. that is when he yelled something in his native tongue which the english do not understand. they attacked the ship and he was able to swim to shore. he made it home. another ship coming in in 1619. so he is home for five years. he is thinking these people might be coming to get me again. there is another fight that breaks out. he gets injured badly. squanto, somehow is released. we don't know how but they got loose. they end up in a massive slave community. a lot of people think the great wampanoag leader. like i said, there were 70 wampanoag communities. what we know for sure is he was the leader of the strongest wampanoag end up there. -- strongest wampanoag community.

it is in bristol warren, rhode island today. squanto ends up there. let's fast track to 1620. the pilgrims are arriving. they arrive -- they final settle in what is plymouth today. december, 1620. they had a really bad year that winter. a lot of people died. from what i hear, february was the deadliest month. they were building their homes. they settled there because there was good water. it was cleared out already. it was a two days walk away, 40 miles west of plymouth. he heard about these people building homes. one thing we were used to, we were always used to people, europeans coming over here. the only thing we were not used to were people coming over and staying. that was different. what made these people different is they brought their women and children. that might have meant a friendlier type of people.

but they did not know. he calls him over, come here. you speak english, right? sure. why don't you go to these people, find out why these people are building their homes. he was a leader, he was not dumb. he was probably thinking, this guy can speak english. he is also not one of my men. i do not know what is going to happen to him. come march 16, 1621, he walks into the pilgrim village. they considered him to be naked. he did not have this much clothing on. he had on just a beach cloth. he goes in and the goes, welcome, englishmen. in their own language. we are still shocked at seeing a native person speaking was to them. he told him about the land, about the area, and about the plague that came through.

he gave them help that evening. they carefully watched them overnight. he goes you know what? i'm not from here. i'm going to bring you a leader who is. so he goes back and tells another to come along. later on in march, he comes along and brings 60 of his men. that is when they make the famous treaty between the two people, the peace treaty of diplomacy. one needed each other at the time. you think about it, i mentioned the plague coming down the coast. that plague stopped them in their tracks right before people started their territory. any thoughts about that, why it stopped right there? we have two good thoughts. they did not like each other for generations before they were europeans here. down there, you have a large body of water called narragansett bay. but then again, they were seeing that the wampanoag were

depleting in numbers. one of the leaders was probably thinking, i will start to attack. the community was located on the border of the narragansetts. the chief came out and -- so one needed each other because how you really felt here, it was not one universal answer. you have to go from community to community. if your brother was taken by a slave -- as a slave by traders prior, are you going to be happy? no. there were leaders who were not happy. but they had a lot of power. basically it is a peace treaty saying if you go to war, i will help you out, and if we go to war, you will help us out. the tree lasted for 55 years -- treaty lasted for 55 years with no major conflict or war. later on in 1621, that is one

squanto comes to live and stay -- when squanto comes to live and stay with the colonists anti-teaches them how to plant corn. that is what he is famous for. teaches them how to plant corn. that is what he is in the textbooks about. like i said, squanto was a changed person. he liked having power. he caused a lot of power back then. he died in 1622. but in that two years, he caused a lot of drama. he liked having power. he died in 1622. in those two years, he caused a lot of drama. you better watch out, bradford wants to attack. and then he would run back and say the same thing. he sent his men to plymouth and wanted squanto's head delivered back to him. i should do this. this could be one of the first breaks of the treaty. if one does something wrong to the other, you have to turn that person over. the ship coming in the water and governor bradford was distracted. the guys got frustrated. squanto died in 1622. that evening, when he was in one of the houses, squanto

had a nosebleed that would not stop. it was called indian fever back then. some type of hemorrhaging going on. he asked the english if he would be accepted into their gods. he knew what he was doing. this guy does not get much praise in the textbooks. if it was not for this guy, history would've been different today. he made the treaty with the english in 1621, he needed somebody else, he needed an ambassadorship out here. he lived with his family of over 10 people. he was the closest native the english

considered to be a friend. they did not say much about his family. i wish i knew one of his wives 'names. she plays a big role in diplomacy. they never give her a name. they do not say much about his family structure. he kept peace between the two people. he was one considered to counsel about war. you are

chosen from childhood, and you have special qualities. special people choose you. you are given a stone knife. you go into the woods alone for a whole winter. he was a key role player. let's

skip up a little bit. if you have ever been on my homeland, this is the oldest meet house. it was built in 1864. we have heard a lot about praying towns. learning about the king james bible. one of my relatives knew the bible so well, he was preaching it to non-native people. there was a chief who called him out. what are you doing? we have our own ways of doing things. why are you teaching something different? and literally punched him in the face. but he continued to preach. we will talk about what he did. it was the first praying town. you had john elliott. do i

have what i am looking for here? i want to talk about this. john elliott was a missionary. he was teaching native people. these two guys would've have been the first graduating class of harvard university back in 1665. one graduated caleb did. joel did not. the reason he did not graduate, two weeks before graduation, he went over to martha's vineyard. on the way back, he stopped in nantucket and he got killed. it was probably his own people who did

it. christianity -- you had a lot of traditionalists still here. you do not know what they were going through unless you walk a mile in their moccasins. i never judge them. what harvard did back in 2011, they invited my family and gave us a posthumous degree in his name, which harvard rarely does. when elliott was teaching the bible to native people, he felt like the native people were not picking up the religion quickly enough. he hired native interpreters. back in the 1990's, there was a woman for my community, and she was having dreams. she said people were coming into her dreams and speaking a different tongue. the

people look familiar. one of her dreams, the people spoke english to her. they said the wampanoag had the chance to get the language back, when they say yes? she went to m.i.t., graduated with a degree in linguistics and started to peace the language back together again -- piece the language back together again. what helped a great deal was that bible. we

have one of the first additions in our grasp today -- editions in our grasp today. my wife is one of the teachers of the language. we teach pre-k up to third grade and every year we add a grade two it. three years ago, the wampanoag is taught as accredited court like english -- course, like english, french, and portuguese. if you lose your culture, you lose part of your identity. nobody likes war. what i can tell you, 1657, that is when two of the big leaders lost their lives. you have the next generation coming out, which did not care for each other. people thought of ownership and the other people did not think of ownership. one culture would build fences around where they lived and the other culture would walk across what they would call their backyard. for a

native person, they are thinking, what do you mean? i don't get that. in 1675, the bloodiest war per capita in new england. it lasted in massachusetts about a year or so. that guy was something to reckon with. a native person talking bad about him. he took his canoe and paddle out here to

confront this person. he asked people on the island to join in on the war. it lasted about a year. it ended up with benjamin church -- august 12, 1676. when they found him, they dismantled him, took his head off, took his arms. took his head back to plymouth and put it on a post. what are they going to do with his wife and kids? a lot of these people were sold as slaves. a lot of these people

were sold down to bermuda. those people still have their cultural identity. they know who they are. we as wampanoag go down and visit them one year. july 4 weekend -- they were up here a few weeks ago. a little forward to what happened here. there is a large population of 400 or so people in nantucket. 1763-1764, wiped out two thirds of the population. what happened to

these people afterwards? a lot of people might have taken off to martha's vineyard. people were spread out. a lot of people say, if it was not recorded, it's not true. that happened. you heard of president jackson? 1830, he wanted to remove all native people. west of the mississippi. oklahoma was one of the states. those agents came around here, too. they wanted us out west in oklahoma. one non-native voice spoke up. if you bring these people at west,

they will die. the reason they will die, they rely on seafood for their diet, and they believed him. that is why we were left alone. what else do we got here? this is kind of cool. we might be doing this next year. seriously. a 40 foot white pine log. we are going to make a 20 man boat. this picture is from martha's vineyard. i have been at the museum for quite a

while. everything was past tense. why can't we do this again? we had a 30 foot pop art tree -- poplar tree donated. we all wanted to steer this boat. we looked at each other and said, let's race for it. he took two 12 foot boats and went across the river to see who would make it back first. he beat me by half of a boat

length. he got to steer the boat. this trip took a lot of planning, right? it took three years. we finally made the trip, though. we left august 18, 2002. we left at 6:00 a.m. at the peak of high tide. we landed -- it was a straight shot. tell me how long it took. the most experienced, including myself in the guest would same crowd? our and-a-half is correct. absolutely correct. when we made this trip we kind of beat the ferry. those people had to take a shuttle to the ferry, take the ferry over to new haven, then take another shuttle to the beach. and we had be in them

there by half hour. they rely, we will have a big celebration and dancing and singing when you guys arrive. we were excited. so i remember paddling in, that day we left it was really cloudy. when we were coming over, all the fog broke and i am paddling in an am like, where is everybody? we were wearing watches so we did not know how long it was taking us. we studies people on the beach in bathing suit. eight sunbathers

from nebraska. [laughter] the first thing out of their mouth was like, you have to do this every day? i go, this has not been done in a couple hundred years. but like i said, we got this 40 foot boat, we have a lot of things we want to do with them next year. and one thing is having then ticket involved. we have some ideas, so stay tuned. leaping up to 1870, that's when it got incorporated. and what that meant for our people is, ok, now it's considered a township. we will give you 25 acres of your own man, but now we will tax you on it. so, that word in my language. so we lost

a lot of our land like that. fast-forward to the 1900s, cape cod became cape cod, tourist attraction. nobody moved to nashville -- nash be not until the 1990's. and it was the fastest developing town in massachusetts. in the 1990's. and today, let me go back, today we have -- we just got recognized by the u.s. government in 2007 as a people. and what we do today we have house services, programs of housing, health, education. we do our powwow, which is july 4 weekend. this right here is a special dance we did this past powwow. this is a lot of my family. we did it for my brother who passed away in 1997. he got

killed in rhode island. we danced for him. i want to show you something. i haven't visited here in eight or 10 years. but my daughter and myself, we went out to the cemetery up the road where my family is buried. my father was raised their, my aunt was raised here, my grandparents were raised here, my grandfather was from ashby. my grandfather

moved here. you got my grandmother ruth west born in 1895, passed away in 1964. she had a stillborn son in 1919. i visited the grounds yesterday and i googled indians of nantucket. i came across this picture that i have in my living room. this is my grandmother. and the nantucket historical society has array here. that is ruth west, that is my grandmother. she passed away in 1964. i will do more digging to see where our actual roots are from. this is one woman. she doesn't show up in the records of ashby. i cannot find her in the records, so i will have to keep on digging to see what i find. any questions? that is my story. [applause]

this is american history tv, featuring events, interviews, archival films, and visits to college classrooms, museums, and historic places. exploring our nation's past, every weekend, on c-span3. interviewy, watch an with him about his career. frequently, what do you consider was your most significant accomplishment in the 12 years you were in washington? was being chief of staff, being secretary treasury and secretary of state and

leaving washington unindicted. my experience as a lawyer and my training as a lawyer really helped me. peter and susan wright in the a file of how i kept every inappropriate request i was asked for. when i was chief of staff or when i was secretary state or anything else. i learned that because i was a lawyer. i came to washington in the immediate aftermath of watergate. happen to could careless people when they go up there. that is a tough environment. chief of staff of the white house, i was longest serving chief of staff in the white house in history up until my successors came along. i tell people it's the worst job

in government, because you walk around with the target on your front and on your back. when people can't get to the president, they want to get to the chief of staff and the press particularly want to. my training as a lawyer was invaluable to me in my second career in politics and public service. bakerrn more about james saturday at 7:00 p.m. eastern, 4:00 p.m. pacific here on american history tv. every saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span three go inside a different college classroom and hear about topics. andhanks for your patience for logging into class. >> with most college campuses closed, watch professors transfer teaching to a virtual setting to engage with their students.

>> gorbachev did most of the work to change the soviet union. reagan met him halfway. reagan encouraged him, reagan supported him. madisonom of the press, originally called it freedom of the use of the press and freedom to print things and publish things. history on in american history tv on c-span3 every saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern. lectures in history is also available as a podcast. >> you are watching american history tv. 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest american history news. next, university of mary

washington history professor william crawley gives a talk titled "harry s. truman: the "harry s. truman: the accidental , president and the triumph of true grit." professor crawley argues that many at the time underestimated truman, in thinking he was not up to the 1945, job. especially in comparison to his predecessor, franklin roosevelt. this video is courtesy of the university, from their "great lives" lecture series. welcome to today's great lives, great president livestock on harry s truman. late one spring afternoon in 1945, vice president truman was summoned to the office of eleanor roosevelt. she said to him, harry, the president is dead. shocked, he expressed condolences and asked if he could do anything for her, to which misses roosevelt replied, no. she added, is there anything that we can do for you?