AllMovie

Acclaimed filmmaker Ric Burns takes an in-depth look at the final decades of the American frontier with a six-hour documentary tracing life in the American West from the Gold Rush to the massacre of American Indians at the hands of U.S. troops in the battle of Wounded Knee. As the new nation was born, the inhabitants of the old world were left to ponder an uncertain future while facing death and disease. Though the years between 1845 and 1893 would bring happiness and prosperity to many who arrived on the shores of America in search of freedom, the price paid in Native American blood would haunt the fledging nation well into the new millennium.