PBS “The West” documentary series (9 episodes) (Amazon streaming)



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This is an excellent documentary series by Stephen Ives and Ken Burns that details the peopling of the Western United States by non-native newcomers starting in 1528 up until the early 1900’s, describing how the United States came to have its current configuration while also explaining how native populations have been displaced and exterminated.



Episode 1: TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE INCLUDE: The Spanish military commander Nunez Cabeza de Vaca landing in present day Texas in 1528, being captured by Indians but eventually escaping and befriended many while gathering a following of Indians as he journeyed south to Mexico City, where his Indian friends were attacked by the Spanish Conquistadors once they reached his destination;  Spanish troops trekking northward six years later to the Great Plains searching for the “Seven Cities of Gold,” decimating many Indian populations as they traveled for almost three years;  The Spanish taking control of the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest, demanding that they abandon their old religious beliefs while European diseases ravaged the people, leading to an Indian uprising that killed many Spanish and drove them out of their territory;  Horses left behind due to the Spanish being driven out by the Pueblos being adopted by the Indians, soon spreading all throughout North American Indian tribes and transforming their way of life, including creating warrior societies that constantly fought and attempted to overtake each other;  The spread of pandemics of diseases such as Smallpox, Measles, and Cholera spreading throughout the native populations of North America, wiping out many before they even encountered Europeans;  Spanish colonization of the west coast starting in 1769, founding major cities such as San Diego and San Francisco as missions to forcibly convert the native populations to Christianity, with three out of four of the native population perishing during a period of a few decades;  The journey of Lewis and Clark searching for a Northwest Passage through newly acquired land by the United States, where they befriended many Indian tribes and crossed the Rocky Mountains and reached the Pacific Ocean.


Episode 2: TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE INCLUDE: Many pioneering Americans traveling west by 1821 in search of beaver pelts including the mountain man Joe Meek who eventually settled in the Pacific Northwest;  The indian acquisition of the horse in the early 1700s leading to many Indian tribes battling for a region of the Black Hills;  Americans settling in Texas when it was still controlled by Mexico in 1821;  The flamboyant Congressman Sam Houston leading a Texas rebellion against Mexico, winning independence for Texas in 1836 and becoming its President;  The Witman family moving to Oregon as Protestant missionaries in 1836, attempting to convert the local native population but having distain for them and failing to convert any;  The creation of a huge new Indian territory in the 1830s stretching from Texas to the middle of the Missouri River that was promised to the Indians forever, with 90,000 being forcibly relocated there including the long assimilated Cherokees who went on their “Trail of Tears”;  The Mormon sect of Christianity being persecuted as heretics throughout the eastern United States in the 1830s, their attempting to settle in Illinois but being driven out, and their exodus of 10,000 to the Great Salt Lake which was outside the boundaries of the U.S.;  The harrowing journey of the pioneering Sager family traveling west in a caravan in 1844, where both parents died on the journey, leaving their seven children as orphans who were then adopted by the missionary Witman family, with the parents of the Witman family being killed by local indian leaders a few years later in retaliation for a measles outbreak that decimated much of their tribe;  The expansionist President James Polk annexing Texas, acquired the Pacific Northwest from Britain under threat of war, and starting the Mexican American war that acquired New Mexico and California, all during his single term starting in 1845.


Episode 3: TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE INCLUDE: James Marshall discovering gold in a creek in California in 1849, sparking a massive international gold rush coming overland and by the sea;  The New York State farmer William Swain deciding to journey to California 1849 against his wife’s wishes, traveling the Overland Trail on a Caravan in 1849 on a difficult journey where many died from disease and other difficulties;  Kit Carson, the mountain man who was a folk hero being the subject of sensational fictional pulp novels;  Many mining towns cropping up in California due to the influx of tens of thousands of miners from the American east and from all over the world including China;  Many prospectors becoming rich but also many not;  The environment in the mining towns having a reputation of being a sinful place full of prostitution and vice almost entirely without other women, and with the stores charging the miners outrageous prices for food and supplies;  The influx of caravans being disastrous for the Native populations of the Great Plains with many dying from disease;  The 1851 Treaty of Laramie where Indian tribes were offered cash compensation for settling on partitions laid out for each tribe;  Government soldiers killing an important Lakota representative named Conquering Bear, leading to the Indians killing the soldiers;  Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo welcoming the immigrants to California, helping to draw the boundaries for the State and becoming a Congressman;  Widespread anti-foreigner bias starting in 1850 pressuring California to enact a heavy tax on those who were not citizens;  The lynching of the Mexican woman named “Josepha” who killed a drunken man that broke into her bedroom;  Chinese people sticking together and being able to make a living even from the less desirable claims, prompting a second tax from 1852 to 1870 with the revenues collected from Chinese miners constituting 50% of the revenue of the State of California, and widespread violent attacks on the Chinese after they refused to leave;  San Francisco growing from 2,000 residents in 1849 to 35,000 in one year, becoming the West’s first city, and one of the world’s great cities in a matter of four or five years;  Interesting local San Francisco characters such as Levi Strauss immigrating from Germany who invented and manufactured durable denim pants for the miners;  Indians near the gold fields being hunted to be exploited as slaves which was allowed by legislation at the time, and another California law barring Indians and Blacks from giving testimony against a White person in court;  Thousands of Indians including women and children being killed in California, with California towns offering bounties for Indian body parts, with 150,000 Indians existing in California before the gold rush, but by 1870 only 30,000 existing, being the worst genocide of Indians in United States history;  William Swian failing in his mining ventures, hardly finding any gold at all, only having enough money to pay for his boat ride home;  Within a few short years all of the surface gold was found by the miners, with the rest being buried under the ground that was now mined by companies that hired mining laborers;  Gold being discovered in other parts of the west including Colorado and Nevada;  John Sutter who first discovered gold in California being financially ruined, with a black freed slave family named Gooch being able to purchase his Mill;  William Swain arriving home in New York State to his family and continuing with his farming.


Episode 4: TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE INCLUDE: The abolitionists Rev. Charles Lovejoy and his wife Julia moving to Lawrence, Kansas in the newly created Kansas territory to be activists to try to keep Kansas slavery-free;  Congress letting the voters of Kansas and Nebraska vote on if they should allow slavery in 1854, which led to each side trying to set up their own governments and violent conflicts happening between them for three months in a period known as “Bleeding Kansas”;  Brigham Young's Salt Lake City growing to be a large city and declaring itself separate from the U.S., printing its own money and allowing polygamy, leading to troops being dispatched to the area but with a peaceful settlement reached before armed conflict, and the Mormons collaborating with local Indians to attack a large wagon train of immigrants traveling through the area, killing over 100 and blaming the entire attack on the Indians; California, New Mexico, and Texas denying Mexican Americans civil liberties, and the Mexican American rancher Juan Cortina leading an armed insurrection in Brownsville, Texas, and being pursued by federal troops but evading capture and continuing to raid settlements from across the Rio Grande for the next fifteen years;  The Civil War starting in 1861;  Confederate forces attacking New Mexico in 1862 and moving north toward Colorado to attempt to capture its gold mines, but being ambushed by Union forces led by a militant preacher named Shivington, who also destroyed the Confederate’s provision wagons, leading to the survivors trudging home starving through the desert, saving the West from a Confederate invasion;  The West being plagued by guerrilla warfare by and against it’s citizens during the war while in the East essentially only troops fought each other;  The abolitionist town of Lawrence Kansas being attacked by Confederate raiders who burned most of the buildings and killed 183 men and boys, leaving behind 80 widows and 250 fatherless children;  A young Sam Clemens setting out for Nevada to avoid the war, living in various mining towns and becoming a reporter for a local newspaper in Virginia City, where he started to sign his name as “Mark Twain”;  In 1864 the Cheyenne Indians led by a peaceful chief named Black Kettle being assigned to a reservation southeast of Denver that was devoid of game and where whites trespassed, leading to the Indians leaving the reservation and some attacking Whites, prompting the Colorado Governor to call for a posse that grew to 700 and was led by General Shivington, where they ambushed and massacred 200 mostly woman and children at the Sand Creek Cheyenne settlement despite them being promised safety;  In 1865 the civil war ending, causing hundreds of thousands of settlers with many being war veterans to set out for the West to start new lives;  In 1866 a troop of 80 men of the 18th infantry at Ft. Philip Kearney were lured out to attack Indian decoys, but instead they were attacked and killed by an ambush of over 2000 Indians;  George Custer leading a Cavalry of 600 soldiers in 1868 that attacked and killed many in an Indian encampment led by Black Kettle;  Custer attempting to negotiate with the last remaining group of Cheyenne Indians promising they would be safe, with the chief agreeing with his terms but promising the spirits would kill him if he broke his promise.


Episode 5: TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE INCLUDE: In 1862 Congress financing the construction of a coast to coast railroad line consisting of 1,775 miles of track stretching from Omaha to Sacramento, crossing the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and barren deserts;  Two charters being created for building the railroad— the Central Pacific being built from the West over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the Union Pacific being built from the East over the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains;  Congress promising each company 6,400 acres of Federal land for every mile of track it laid, which was a gift the size of California plus Montana;  10,000 men working on the Union Pacific moving west, most being from Ireland but also including Mexicans, Germans, Englishmen, former soldiers, and former slaves, making two or three miles of progress each day;  The progress of the project being followed by prostitutes, pimps, gamblers, saloon keepers, and gunmen eager to take the men’s weekly pay;  Plains Indian tribes being completely dependent on the Buffalo that at one point numbered 30 million but by the 1860s had already started to decline due to the introduction of horses and increased hunting by Indians for the Buffalo robe trade;  Many Indians resenting the railroad’s intrusion, so they derailed trains, ransacked train cars, and fired on surveying crews making construction fall behind schedule;  In 1867 an army detail was overtaken by an Indian war party, after which 5,000 army troops were sent to protect the crews;  The Central Line having difficulties building in the Sierra Nevada Mountains due to 3 out of 4 employees abandoning their worksites to set out prospecting, so the company employed as many as 11,000 Chinese workers using black powder to blast through the rock mountains, with crews needing to gouge out 15 tunnels in the Sierra Nevada averaging only 8 inches of progress a day, with as many as 1,200 Chinese dying during the construction;  In 1868 the Central Pacific breaking out of the high Sierra Mountains;  Charles Goodnight going from being a hardworking poor farmer’s son to blazing a new trail to bring cattle to the North from Texas that earned him much compensation, but with his business partner being killed by Indians;  The two rail lines meeting at Promontory Point, Utah on May 10, 1869, with the event of the final spike being driven broadcast to both coasts by telegraph;  With the completion of the railroad, the journey across the country that once took months could then be accomplished in a matter of days;  The railways bringing non-Mormon immigrants to Salt Lake City who looked down on the practice of polygamy, with Emaline Wells being one of many women who were in polygamous marriages who spoke out about the benefits of such an arrangement, and in fact she was a leader in national feminist movements including ones for women’s suffrage;  Many rail lines then being built across the West following the lead of the Union Pacific, including the Kansas Pacific, Northern Pacific, Denver Pacific, Texas, Topeka, and Santa Fe;  The railroads bringing many people West, with many interested in hunting Buffalo for sport and only shooting the Buffalo from the windows of passenger cars, with vast new markets opening for buffalo byproducts, especially hides and bones;  Competition between railroads and between states to attract the most settlers, with the Homestead Act promising 160 acres of public land to any person who filed a claim, paid a ten dollar fee, and agreed to work the property for five years, resulting in Kansas growing by more than half a million people and the Nebraska population quadrupling within a few years;  200 Scottish families settling on the Kansas-Nebraska border, the Hebrew immigrant society bringing Jews from Eastern Europe to Oregon, Colorado, Kansas, and the Dakotas, and many other nationalities settling in the great plains including Germans, Russians, Swedish, Dutch, French, Bohemian, Irish, and Norwegian Families;  Immigrants setting up new towns and planting wheat in the fertile soil from as far away as Russia, which flourished and helped to make the United States be the agricultural wonder of the world;  Cattle trails leading north from Texas stretching for hundreds of miles to reach rail heads where the cattle are shipped east, with as many as 6 million cattle shipped over the next few decades, giving rise to the culture of “Cowboys” who led difficult lives with little compensation;  Buffalo hunters killing massive amounts of Buffalo likening it to a harvest rather than a hunt, leaving carcasses all over the Great Plains;  Buffalo hunters venturing into Indian reservations without being stopped by the government, causing many tribes to rise up and drive out hunters and any other Whites, with the government responding by sending massive columns of troops that allowed the Buffalo hunters to go right back to work, decimating the Buffalo herds within a year and almost bringing it to extinction, that destroyed the Indian’s way of life forever.


Episode 6: TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE INCLUDE: 1000 solders marching into the Lakota territory of the Black Hills and building a fort in 1874 when gold was discovered in the area, despite the region being promised by treaty to the Lakotas forever;  Word getting out in the press about gold being discovered in the Black Hills, prompting many to rush to the territory with many mining camps being established;  The Chief and holy man Sitting Bull refusing to move his people from the Black Hills despite buyout offers from the U.S. Government, prompting the Government to send more troops to occupy the area and sending General Custer on a military campaign in 1876 where Sitting Bull’s settlement at the Little Bighorn rose up to defend themselves and completely overthrew Custer’s troops, killing all of them including Custer that then prompted many additional troops being sent to the region with the treaty then being nullified by Congress, and Sitting Bull’s tribe fleeing to Canada;  The Federal Government’s attempts to reduce the growing power of Brigham Young in Utah with the trial of John D. Lee, who was prosecuted by the Government for his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre 20 years earlier;  The Oregon area Nez Perce Indians refusing to move onto a reservation with some then killing Whites, that prompted one of the most remarkable pursuits in military history where the tribe was chased for 1,500 miles by 2000 soldiers and Indian scouts while the tribe won all 17 military engagements they encountered, but with them being stopped just before reaching Canada and surrendering, saying “I will fight no more, forever”;  The captured Nez Perce Indians then being sent to live at an unsanitary detention area in Oklahoma where many soon died despite being promised to be able to return to Oregon, with one of the men dying being the half-indian son of William Clark named Halahtookit, whose father was sheltered by the Nez Perce 70 years previously and promised them that the United States would always be their friend.


Episode 7: TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE INCLUDE: Between 1877 and 1887, 4.5 million people immigrated West, with almost half settling on the Great Plains, being 40 Whites for every Indian;  Benjamin Pap Singleton the ex slave from Tennessee forming independent Black communities of immigrants in the West called “Exodusters,” with 15,000 settling in farms and communities of Eastern Kansas;  People starting to move to the most arid sections of the Great Plains that were previously passed over due to the states and railroads attempting to lure new settlers, but with the dry weather making life difficult or impossible;  The exiled Indian chief sitting Bull surrendering to the United States from Canada in 1881 and being ordered to confinement on the Standing Rock reservation;  Traditional Indian dances being harshly punished, with many of the Indians being ordered to speak English, put behind all their religious customs, live in log cabins, and learn how to farm;  The experience of the Chinese immigrant Chung Sun, who was beaten and robbed of his life savings upon his arrival in 1871 during an increasingly common anti-Chinese riot which killed 23 people, leading him to work as a ditch digger for a short time until a law was passed making it illegal to hire Chinese workers, prompting Sun to move back to China;  Congress passing the Chinese exclusion act which prohibited all immigration from China for a period of ten years;  The 24 year old New York assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt moving to the Dakota Territory in 1883 and ranching for three summers;  The multi-generational established lives of the initial Hispanic settlers in California being overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of new immigrants bringing Western laws and political establishments due to the construction of new railroads to the territory;  Mormonism being under attack by Congress again in 1882, with polygamy being declared a Federal crime, with Mormonism banning polygamy leading to Utah being admitted as the 45th State to the Union;  Many Indian children being sent to re-education schools to eradicate their Indian pasts and “educate them as Americans,” starting in 1883;  The 22 year old government appointed Ethnographer Frank Hamilton Cushing who became an honorary tribal member of the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico in 1879, with him even taking part in tribal warfare against Navaho Indians;  The devastating snow storms of the winter of 1887 killing most of the free range cattle population;  And the popular “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show” traveling throughout the eastern U.S. and Europe for thirty years starting in 1883, showing reenactments of stereotypical western cowboy and Indian conflicts, with Sitting Bull himself joining the show for a few months in 1885.


Episode 8: TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE INCLUDE: Hundreds of thousands of settlers rushing into the Oklahoma Indian territory that was now opened for homesteading in 1889, with towns cropping up in a matter a days, such as the town of Guthrie having a hotel, general stores, three newspapers, and fifty saloons within being only a month old;  The passage of the Dawes Act in 1887, providing each Indian family be given 160 acres of farmland or 320 of grazing land, with the remaining tribal lands being declared “surplus” and opened for whites, attempting to make Indian tribes disappear;  The efforts of Alice Fletcher in the 1870s to try to “save” the Nez Perce from themselves by dividing up their land and making them homesteaders;  The mining town of Butte, Montana that was first a gold mining town in the 1860s, then mining silver in the 1870s, then mining the largest deposit of copper the world had ever seen starting in 1881, with the copper being used for the new electrical age as conductors, machines, and wires;  The General Mining Law of 1872 being signed by Ulysses S. Grant to encourage mining exploitation in the West, with it imposing no environmental regulation and no royalties paid to the government for what was mined;  By 1890 no Indian people anywhere in the West lived freely on their own land, with their reservations being broken up under the Dawes Act with Congress also cutting appropriations causing widespread hunger and disease;  Sitting Bull being killed in 1890 by one of his own tribe who was a member of the Indian police that answered to the U.S. government, followed by 120 men and 230 women of his tribe being killed at Wounded Knee a few days later;  Armed Indian resistance in the West ending in 1891 with the surrender of 4,000 Ghost dancers to the United States;  An introduction to the story of Ethel and John Love, settlers in Wyoming who endured many hardships.


Episode 9: TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE INCLUDE: The World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 signaling that the frontier has finally closed, with 17 million of the 63 million Americans then living west of the Mississippi;  The US peopled the West in a matter of only a few years, much quicker than people predicted would happen a hundred years earlier;  The population of Los Angles exploding around the turn of the century, leading to the massive construction project of an aqueduct from the Owens River Valley 233 miles to the northeast, which allowed Los Angeles to soon surpass San Francisco as the biggest and most powerful city in the West;  Long time Hispanic settler of California Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo who fought the Indians on behalf of Spain, commanded California troops for Mexico, and welcomed the Americans to the Pacific Coast watching in dismay as newcomers dispossessed him of land and dismissed his role he played in the history of California;  Many Mexican immigrants came to work in mines, railroads, and agricultural fields in the West at the turn of the century;  Charles Goodnight who was the first to blaze a cattle trail across the Great Plains and started a Buffalo herd to keep the species alive made a movie in 1916 at age 80 that accurately depicted the West, but it never caught on with the public who preferred stereotypical Westerns;  In many cases Native Americans were forced to adopt European lifestyles, such as living in cabins;  A native American named Wolf Chief opened a general store, but he was pressured to close it until he rectified the situation by writing to Washington D.C., which prompted him to frequently write such letters that had a beneficial effect;  A continuation of the story of Ethel and John Love, who settled on an isolated prairie of Wyoming and endured a lifetime of difficulties including the loss of their livestock herds, catastrophic floods that caused a foreclosure by the bank, a dam John constructed breaking, the loss of infant children, the family savings being lost with a bank failure, and John and his son being stricken with Spanish Influenza, but despite these hardships their three children went to college and succeeded in life;  Chief Joseph attempting to have his native land in Oregon returned but not succeeding in doing so despite being widely well-thought of.



This article is a part of the summary article “A Summary of the History of the World, in Videos.”