Land Of The Eagle

This 8-part series, which originally aired just before Thanksgiving last year, is a huge effort from the combined talents of WNET in New York and the BBC in Bristol to offer a historically accurate account of the settling of North America. Beginning with The Great Encounter, which chronicles the arrival of the English colonists and the loss of 3/4ths of their population due to starvation (they did not immediately take to the lessons of the Native Americans), and concluding with Searching For Paradise, which focuses on the last great migration in the U.S. (the California Gold Rush), Land of the Eagle mixes history with nature as the stories of the people are seen in conjunction with great wildlife footage capturing the flora and fauna indigenous to North America. We watched the second episode, Confronting the Wilderness, which traced the movement of settlers up the eastern seaboard and into Canada where the French trappers began to make some serious coin off of the Canadian beaver and other animal pelts. This activity eventually drew the attention of the British and, as might be expected, the fur began to fly. The British were, of course, victorious, which is why Queen Elizabeth's likeness is on Canadian currency today rather than Francois Mitterrand's. Sandwiched between the warring forces were the diminished Indian tribes (all but decimated a century earlier by the European gift of smallpox) which had settled in the St. Lawrence River region. Combining tales from the diaries of trappers and explorers, along with commentary on beavers, pitcher plants, wolves, damsel flies, and snow geese, among others, Land of the Eagle offers a good mix of history and nature. The other five titles in the series are: Conquering the Swamps, Across the Sea of Grass, Into the Shining Mountains, Living On the Edge, and The First and Last Frontier. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (See THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: BARNUM'S BIG TOP for availability.)