- [Narrator] You may think you know about the winter in Valley Forge.

The one you learned about in middle school was cold, the soldiers didn't have food, many died.

What you may not have learned is that George Washington deliberately infected thousands of men with smallpox to save the Continental Army.

This mass inoculation campaign was unprecedented, risky, and ultimately successful.

And buried in the records of that campaign is the story of an indigenous man, Thomas Stewart, a Sappony warrior from the North Carolina-Virginia borderlands who was inoculated against smallpox during the American Revolution.

His story was hidden in plain sight for nearly 250 years until Sappony tribal researchers uncovered it.

- Things were written about us for several hundred years, but the people here in this tribe didn't have access to them and sometimes didn't even know about them.

- [Narrator] So we traveled to Sappony hunting grounds on the High Plains.

What we found is a tribe rooted in faith with a remarkable warrior tradition in a paradox.

Helping birth the nation was one thing, surviving inside it as Indigenous people was another.

- Everybody assumes that fighting for independence was an easy decision.

- [Narrator] This is Homegrown History.

[bird chirps] [bright music] - Oh yeah, this is my field.

- [Narrator] This is Frankie Talley, a Sappony man and veteran who likes to hunt the traditional way, no trail cams, no GPS, no quad runners to haul his kill back to camp.

He believes: if you shoot it, you carry it.

- To me, that's not hunting.

You don't get no exercise.

And I'm an avid walker.

I like walking through the woods and stuff.

Just to see the forest, just all the pretty trees that's out there.

I think that's from being in the military too.

- [Narrator] Frankie grew up hunting here in the High Plains.

- We'd go hunt and we'd kill as many 30 rabbits and probably eight or 10 squirrels, because as we saw squirrels through the trees, we'd shoot them too.

You had to be a good shot because you didn't have the money to buy shells and stuff.

And so you want to make every shot count.

And all these little bluffs in here, I know how to get around there good.

It's almost like I got a compass in my head.

You know what I mean?

I know east, northeast, south, or west, whatever.

And I know the directions to go in to get back home.

[intriguing music] - [Narrator] Half a century before the Revolutionary War, another Sappony hunter named Ned Bearskin guided a surveying party right through these tribal lands.

The expedition was led by William Byrd II, a Virginia aristocrat in charge of settling the longstanding dispute between Virginia and North Carolina over territory.

With the help of Bearskin, Byrd and his surveying party drew the official dividing line between the two colonies.

But why would Ned Bearskin, an Indigenous man, help draw that line right through his people's lands?

Dante Desiderio has been searching for answers in journals, manuscripts, and colonial government records for three decades.

- Dealing with the colonies wasn't easy, and they were both competing for trade and this boundary line offered a lot of safety.

If we needed to, we can go on the Carolina side for protection.

If we needed to, we go on the Virginia side for protection right on the boundary line, without changing and disrupting our way of life.

Bearskin knew where the boundary line was and we looked at that as protection, this idea of the safe haven.

- [Narrator] As a Piedmont tribe, the Sappony had been living with colonists for a long time, trading, guiding and protecting, and even being educated in one of the first Indian schools in the country.

By the 1750s, when the British went to war with the French and many of their Indian allies, some Sappony chose to fight on the side of their neighbors, the British colonists.

But their future was far from certain.

So on the eve of the war for independence, their choice to fight in the Revolutionary War was an existential one.

- This is a choice of how do we survive in the colony?

How do we survive as a people?

And it's a really daunting choice when your population is small and you're kind of marginalized in the first place.

All these decisions, none of them were easy to be able to try to just keep our people together, and more important, to remain in our homeland.

- [Narrator] But as the American Revolution arrived, researchers believed that the Sappony had to make new alliances in order to stay on their land.

So in 1778, a Sappony warrior named Thomas Stewart chose the Patriot cause when he enlisted in the Continental Army.

And almost immediately, Stewart was thrust into one of the most storied moments of the Revolutionary War, Valley Forge.

[tense music] - [Narrator 2] With his men freezing in the desolation of Valley Forge, only General Washington's granite determination prevented the cause of the United States from slipping into defeat.

- [Narrator] If you remember one thing about the Revolutionary War from middle school, it's probably Valley Forge.

It was winter of 1778, the British had taken Philadelphia, a Patriot stronghold, and George Washington needed a place for his army to wait out the brutal winter.

So he chose Valley Forge, a frozen plateau 20 miles north of Philadelphia.

Nearly 2,000 soldiers would die there, not from British bullets, but from hunger, cold, and disease.

One of the deadliest threats, smallpox.

At its peak, more than one-third of the Continental Army was too sick to fight.

Washington had avoided inoculating his troops for months because it required intentionally getting them sick, which would take more out of the fight and make them an easy target.

But at Valley Forge, 12,000 soldiers living in makeshift log huts created ideal conditions for the disease to spread.

So George Washington made an unprecedented decision, to inoculate thousands of soldiers at once.

It worked like this: A doctor cut open a pustule on an infected patient, then used that same blade to make an incision under a healthy person's skin.

Most inoculated people got sick, but with a much weaker version of the disease.

Many historians believe this bold public health gamble saved the Continental Army.

Thomas Stewart was one of them.

Our co-producer, Kara Stewart, has been researching Thomas Stewart's story for years.

He's her fifth great-grandfather, and she shared much of her research with us for this episode.

- This is our tribal archiving office, and we've been documenting our history.

We have about 1,500 documents that we collected over the course of three years.

- [Narrator] Using primary resources surfaced by the tribe, Kara found out what happened next.

- Muster roll documents.

First, when I was looking at this, obviously, Valley Forge, that's a big deal.

- [Narrator] After three years of fighting to liberate the Northeast from British occupation, Thomas marched to fight at the Battle of Guilford Court House, roughly 127 miles from where he grew up.

The Battle of Guilford Court House devastated the British Army, 27% of their forces laid dead or wounded.

But Thomas also paid the price of a warrior.

It was there, in the middle of the fight, as he was raising his gun to fire it a second time, that a musket ball shattered his wrist.

- So one man said that he was at the Battle of Guilford and was wounded in the wrist.

This wound was so notorious that every old man in the county was familiar with the fact.

So, to me, that tells me he was not shy about talking about his war service.

- [Narrator] The wound resulted in permanent damage to his arm.

But despite that, six months later, Thomas made his way north to fight at Yorktown, where he helped finish what they started at Guilford Court House.

General Cornwallis surrendered, and Thomas made it out alive.

Records show he returned to the High Plains, married, and raised a family with his wife, Sarah Drummond.

And that the couple settled in Person County, North Carolina, where he set up shop as a blacksmith.

- He's making a living as a blacksmith despite this wound.

So we know he's persistent, right?

We know he had that blacksmith shop all of the rest of his life.

- [Narrator] And while looking into his story, tribal researchers discovered another Sappony Patriot hidden in the records, a man named John Epps.

- John Epps and Thomas were good friends.

Thomas and Sarah left from John's house to get married as a runaway match, is what they call it in the pension application.

- [Narrator] Epps was barely 17 when he enlisted in a Virginia regiment of the Continental Army, and he served two tours.

Then Kara discovered something else about him that helps us understand the Sappony's challenges after the war.

Just six years after Britain recognized America's independence, John Epps was arrested.

- So this is the 1789 Virginia Herald Fredericksburg Advertiser.

And on the second page, in the bottom corner, there's the ad.

"Committed to the jail of this county on suspicion of being a runaway, a mulatto man about 25 years of age, about five feet, 10 inches high, has on a light-colored broad cloth coat, corduroy waistcoat, brown linen overalls, and a pair of shoe boots.

Says he is a free man and calls his name John Epps.

The owner or owners, if any, are requested to apply, pay the charges, and take the said negro and horse away."

He's called mulatto at the beginning of the paragraph.

He's called a negro at the end.

And that was common at the time.

So to me, that is the earliest instance I have ever read about... about a native man fighting for the rights of the country that he's in, fighting for the rights of these colonists.

And eight years later, not even a decade later, they turn around and they take away his rights.

Even though he fought for them, they take away his right to freedom.

[pensive music] - This is where my heart is.

This is where I spend my Sundays.

And I am the pianist and the organist for the church.

And I've been playing the piano here for the church since I was in the eighth grade.

- [Narrator] Elders say that the creation of their close-knit community is how they managed to survive after the war.

- I mean, we've managed to go a long way with our tribe, and I just thank God for our forefathers that held on to our identity.

I, as of today, do not look at this area as North Carolina, Virginia.

It's the High Plains community.

We just forget all about the boundaries, the borderlines, and keep Sappony in High Plains.

- And in our community, we have three things that are of utmost importance.

And that is our faith, our family, and education.

- [Narrator] In the years following the Revolutionary War, the Sappony went on to build schools and churches in the High Plains.

Just a few miles down the road from Cavalry Baptist, we find the relics of the original church and school that was built by the tribe on land that was once owned by the descendants of John Epps, that Patriot veteran who was arrested under suspicion of being a runaway enslaved person after the Revolutionary War.

Elders say that legacy of Patriotic service has continued to this day.

From Valley Forge to Vietnam to Desert Storm, the Sappony have fought in every major American conflict since the Revolution.

- I was in heavy artillery, 94th Artillery Division in Vietnam.

We were the only army unit there and we were support for the Marine unit that fought along the DMZ.

We got hit three and four times a day, every day, every night.

Artillery, rockets, mortars, all that stuff.

And it was rough.

When I can't get outside and do things, I'm miserable.

And I got PTSD from Vietnam, and staying busy outside, that's my therapy.

When I'm hunting, I go to the elite places, those high bluffs with big trees and stuff, just watching wildlife move around.

And that too is exciting to me.

I've been all over the place, traveling and stuff in the military and all, but it's no place like home.

When I flew into Raleigh-Durham Airport, that day, even if no one had met me there on a vehicle, I'd have walked home.

[thoughtful music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪