Synopsis

The westward expansion of the United States, a six-hour chronicle of loss and conquest, unfolded from the first echoes of the 1848 Gold Rush to the final, desperate moments of the Indian Wars at Wounded Knee in 1893. It was a period when the West was settled, subdued, exploited, and ultimately absorbed into the burgeoning American empire. The Lakota, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Ponca, Apache, Nez Perce, and Ute peoples resisted fiercely, only to witness the systematic dismantling of their world, their trad