Original subtitles

From the ashes of the Civil War,

a new breed of American emerges...

determined to grab a piece

of the nation's untamed frontier.

Life was tough certainly after the Civil War.

And you had this vast continent that was unexplored.

And I think that fostered a big migration to the West.

Over the course of 30 years,

more than 430 million acres of land

will be settled.

But as the US government pushes the nation west,

former Confederates hell-bent on taking back

what they lost become outlaws...

We intend to rob this here bank.

Who's the cashier?

...threatening to reignite the Civil War.

In that day, you had to be somewhat of a bad guy to survive.

They were all tough and nobody lived very long.

On the plains, war breaks out

as tribes of warriors band together

to protect their way of life.

We deploy Custer and 1,200 men to track down

whatever remains of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull's war party.

If necessary, wipe them out.

This is the story

of an age of violence like no other,

a time when blood is shed and battles fought

by ordinary men who become legends...

...as they fight to determine the fate of the country.

The West shaped this country in ways

that people either don't acknowledge or have taken for granted

or have simply forgotten.

The West was true freedom.

It was such a defining characteristic of America.

This is "The American West."

You go to hell.

You first.

The story of the West begins at the end

of the Civil War...

where a young man named Jesse James

is a soldier in a fringe military group

known as Quantrill's Raiders.

Quantrill's Raiders were guerilla fighters

fighting for the South.

They didn't necessarily fight in traditional ways,

and the way they fought could often be very savage, very violent,

and their targets could be civilians as well as military.

We got to go! We got to go!

There they go! Come on!

Get him!

- Can you run? - No.

In the spring of 1865,

Jesse James is shot and captured

by the Union Army.

Now, say it.

I solemnly swear...

That I will bear the true allegiance

of the United States.

Say it.

I will bear true allegiance to the United States.

And discourage...

Jesse James is forced to pledge allegiance

to the Union.

Before he's released, the Confederacy surrenders

and after four years of bloody fighting,

the Civil War comes to an end.

After surviving a near fatal wound,

Jesse James returns home to Missouri

only to find death and destruction all around.

After the Civil War, the South was hellacious.

It had been ruined.

And there was a great deal of resentment

of northern authority, of federal authority.

There were a lot of people who were mentally unbalanced

by that war, by the brutality of it.

In the border state of Missouri,

the fighting has been especially brutal.

Missouri is one of the states

that stuck with the Union during the Civil War,

but had large sectors of the population

that wanted to go with the South in the first place.

So you had Missourians fighting Missourians.

It's in this incredibly volatile,

literally brother against brother world

that we get Jesse James.

Jesse soon discovers that the war

has not only torn apart his homeland,

it's left his family with nothing.

You look good, Frank.

You look like shit.

I bet you gave them Union boys hell, though, didn't you?

It's just real nice to be home.

Mom, I promise you,

we're gonna get back on our feet.

Me and Frank will figure out something.

Jesse and his brother Frank

grew up in rural Missouri.

Their father had gone off to the gold fields

during the Gold Rush and had died there.

Jesse's mother, Zerelda James, was a single parent,

and I think that created a very, very strong bond

between her and her children.

Still reeling from his time in battle,

Jesse knows he has to find a way to provide for his family.

So he comes up with a plan.

He forms a gang...

and begins stealing.

When you think of Jesse James and those families,

they have been stripped of everything, they felt,

after the Civil War and they were gonna come

and take what they thought was owed to them.

- Come here, come here. - Let's go.

Here, take this.

Go, go, go!

But the Union Army quickly cracks down.

Jesse.

Cover that up.

How you doing?

What's in the crates?

Food,

various sundries.

Got some sweet corn.

- You boys hungry? - Want some water.

- We don't take orders from northern... - Frank!

We got water.

Fresh out of the creek.

Tastes like shit.

Yeah, well, I guess we're used to it.

Search the house. Take it all.

Yes, sir.

Fed up with the North's presence,

Jesse James is determined to fight back.

Jesse James could not adjust to peacetime.

He was strongly opposed to what was going on in the South

and in fact viewed the army after the end of the war as being oppressive.

As attacks from Confederates like Jesse

escalate around the South,

news travels over 1,000 miles to the east

to the nation's capital.

These just came in.

You're dismissed.

The man who has to deal with the growing unrest

in the South is the same man

who recently claimed victory over the Confederacy...

commanding general of the US Army

Ulysses S. Grant.

When the Civil War began,

Grant was considered by many to be a failure,

a drunk with no future in the military.

But after a series of Union generals

were unable to secure victory for the North,

Abraham Lincoln promoted Grant to lead the US Army,

and he rose to the task.

General Grant is one of the true military geniuses.

He saw the objective and he knew what needed to be done.

With tensions rising in the former Confederacy,

Grant is forced to deal with the South once again.

When Grant took control of the army,

he had to deal with leftover matters from the Civil War.

Grant understood that there was a feeling in the South

that this defeat was something that still might be resisted.

And Grant had to attend to that.

Grant knows he can't let rebels like Jesse James

reignite the war.

So he sends more US troops south to maintain order

and institutes strict martial law.

Just over a year since the end of the Civil War,

it's North versus South again.

With former Confederate soldiers like Jesse James

lashing out against northern authority in the South...

...General Ulysses S. Grant sends armed troops

to enforce order.

During the immediate aftermath of the Civil War,

military government martial law was imposed

and Union soldiers were in occupation of much of the South.

Southerners generally resisted this.

It was, from their perspective, a continuation of the Civil War

in which northerners imposed their will,

imposed their ways on the South.

But the increased military presence

only makes things worse.

Jesse James and other ex-Confederates like him

begin rioting.

With the Civil War on the verge of starting up again,

Grant knows a new strategy is needed to heal the nation.

So he and the US government

look to a plan laid out by the man who led the country

during the Civil War... Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln knew that the key to healing the country

would be to give all Americans the promise

of a new start in the West.

The value of going into uncharted territory,

there's a chance for enterprise and development

and a chance for people to grow and to succeed

in ways they couldn't in the overdeveloped East.

And also, I think, just the excitement

and the challenge of uncharted territory...

that's a little bit of the American way.

From the Missouri River

to the coast of California,

the frontier is nearly 500 million square miles

of wide-open land.

You have the Pacific Ocean on one end,

and you have the Atlantic Ocean on the other end,

and all the vast land in between that.

It's the whole idea of looking for opportunity,

looking for another life.

The challenge is figuring out

how to get people to the West as quickly as possible.

And Grant knows the answer.

The same way he was able to rapidly move Union troops

during the Civil War.

Whoa, hold up on that sleeper.

Get to work.

The railroads.

Hold up on that...

To promote construction,

the government makes the railroad companies

an unprecedented offer...

millions of acres of free land.

For every mile of track that a railroad would build,

Congress would provide the company with land

on either side of the track.

The land grants that Congress provides

really is the sweetheart deal of the century.

175 million acres

are given to the railroad companies...

more land than the entire state of Texas.

The railroads then take the land they got for free

and sell it to the settlers...

using a massive advertising campaign

that promotes the West as an uninhabited paradise.

People were lured by this fantastic sense of opportunity.

You can be a poor immigrant and all of a sudden

there's an opportunity that you can get 50 acres and start a life.

That's like winning the lottery back then.

I mean, it was amazing.

But as Americans begin to head west by the thousands...

they're pushing into land that's already occupied

by a people determined to defend it.

As railroads expand west,

hopeful new settlers push into territory

that's been occupied for thousands of years.

At the end of the last Ice Age,

nomadic hunters migrated into the Americas

across a land bridge that once connected Siberia to Alaska.

By 1865,

300,000 Native Americans are living in the West.

The most numerous and powerful people on the plains

are the Lakota Sioux.

But now their homelands are being invaded.

For the Lakota people, 1865 is a major turning point.

With the railroads coming west,

there is literally and figuratively

a freight train coming right at them.

Standing in the path of the invasion

is a fearless young warrior.

His name is Crazy Horse.

Crazy Horse was a very talented military leader

who was the chief lieutenant

of the Sioux in the northern Great Plains.

The land is sacred to the Lakota

and Crazy Horse feels it's his duty to defend it.

Native Americans, when they saw the railroad,

they knew that there was now a vehicle

to invade them with and it was protected by steel.

And it was fast.

In 1866, Crazy Horse takes part

in a bloody campaign throughout the Wyoming territory.

Sioux in the northern Great Plains

are fighting against the settlers who are moving into that area.

And they're winning.

In the span of six months,

dozens of settlers are killed

and movement through the territory is restricted.

News of the violence makes its way to Washington, DC...

...where it's received by the man overseeing troops in the West,

famed Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman.

I just received word from the Dakota territories.

Another six men have been killed in a raid.

General Grant knows

he can't let chaos on the frontier

threaten the government's plan of unifying the country,

so he orders Sherman to use military force.

In late 1866,

nearly 1,000 soldiers pour into Sioux territory.

Crazy Horse knows it's up to him

to defend his land and his people

against an enemy with superior firepower.

But he's confident he'll prevail,

thanks to a powerful vision he had in his youth.

Crazy Horse, as a young man, had a vision.

And in this vision he sees that whenever he's in battle,

he's very safe from the enemy and the enemy can never hurt him.

And in essence he could be protected

from anything that the enemy might do to him.

Emboldened by his vision,

Crazy Horse sets in motion a daring plan.

Several Lakota are set to decoy the US Army,

and one of these people is Crazy Horse.

It's obviously a very risky position to be in

because you're putting yourself very close to the US Army.

Crazy Horse lures the soldiers

away from the protection of their forts

into an open territory.

Once he has them in position,

Crazy Horse begins his assault.

Ready!

He charges alone...

Aim!

...directly into their line of fire.

Fire at will!

It's a tactic known as riding the brave line.

And it exposes the soldiers' greatest weakness.

Reload!

On December 21, 1866,

Crazy Horse claims one of his greatest victories...

killing nearly 100 US soldiers...

in what becomes known

as the Battle of a Hundred Slain.

Now, in addition to trying to contain the southern rebellion,

Grant must deal with an Indian war

that's beginning to rage out West,

threatening the future of the nation.

After Crazy Horse and his men

kill nearly 100 US soldiers in a single battle,

news travels back to Washington.

Incompetence.

These savages, they don't fight the way we do.

Commanding general Ulysses S. Grant

is not only facing uprisings in the South,

but a new war in the West.

Grant realizes the only way to defeat the Indians

is to send his best commander from the Civil War...

a man stationed 2,000 miles away in Texas

who's famous for both his victories

and his unconventional commanding style.

His name is George Armstrong Custer.

George Armstrong Custer was very flamboyant.

He had flowing blond hair.

Some say he curled it himself.

He wore a signature costume, if you will,

that he called a uniform.

He had a red handkerchief, shiny boots,

and a broad-rimmed hat.

And he just showed himself to be superior to others.

Where did you acquire that insignia on your uniform, soldier?

West Point, sir. Fourth in my class.

Fourth in your class?

Gentlemen, we have a celebrity in our midst.

Do you know what position I graduated?

Last.

And yet here I stand commanding you.

Why is there a button missing from your coat?

You're a disgrace

to that insignia.

You are a disgrace to my unit.

And you are a disgrace to every man who ever wore that uniform.

One month laundry duty.

Make it the end of the year.

Though Custer is not the army's most beloved leader,

he is respected for the killer instincts

he showed during the Civil War.

Cover their left flank!

It was his daring charge

that contributed to Robert E. Lee's surrender.

Lieutenant, why are you falling back?

You breach their front lines and you push.

A lot of people laughed at him,

but not in battle.

He was a hell of a soldier.

Tremendous courage.

The thing that scared people half to death

was being assigned to him

'cause you were gonna be in the middle of everything.

But since the Civil War ended,

Custer has been relegated to overseeing border patrol

at a remote post.

Custer was sent into exile.

He brooded over this, of course.

And he knew that he needed to get back into action.

Sir.

Grant gives him the opportunity

he's been waiting for.

Custer got command of the 7th Cavalry,

which was going to be the crack elite unit

for Indian fighting in the West.

George Custer finally has his chance

to step back into the limelight.

And it's an assignment that will change the course

of American history.

In the years following the Civil War,

former Confederate soldier Jesse James

has been leading an uprising in Missouri.

All right, boys, I'll tell you what's going to happen.

Me, Charlie, and Frank will head inside.

Get around that counter, easy money.

Until now, Jesse's crimes have been small.

But as the North's postwar domination of the South continues...

Jesse is starting to think bigger.

He decides that the best way to express his hatred for the North

is to go after their wealth.

In the first 80 years of America's existence,

there was not a single armed bank robbery.

So at the time, banks have minimal security.

And even in the South,

they hold mostly northern money.

Rob a bank and you're stealing northern wealth.

Jesse James wanted the money,

but he had a real statement he was trying to make

that was as much political as it was about robbing banks.

Go.

Everything in your vault.

Open the vault.

Move.

- Open the vault. - Hold on, hold on.

In the corner now.

I know you.

Where'd you fight?

- I didn't. - You did.

You fought for the Union, didn't you?

No.

Let's open the vault, be on our way.

- You fought at Richmond. - No, I didn't.

- Don't you shake your head at me. - Jesse.

You're the man who shot Bill Anderson.

The Civil War made Jesse James.

He killed men, he saw men killed.

Seeing death every day changes the way you look at life.

Jesse mistook the teller

for the murderer of his leader during the Civil War.

I found you, you son of a bitch.

We still need him to open the vault.

Bill Anderson was my friend.

God damn it, Jesse. On the floor!

Come on, Jesse, we got to go.

Come on, now! Come on.

That revolver shot

is somewhat of a release.

When Jesse fires that gun,

there's a welled-up bitterness that's been boiling for years.

He still has the memories he witnessed personally during the war.

Lots of his friends have been killed.

Jesse refused to forget.

A lot of his makeup was revenge.

Come on, Jesse. We got to go.

Jesse, come on. Come on, now.

Get, boys, get.

Come on.

Come on.

Jesse James has just pulled off

one of the first bank robberies in America,

leaving one man dead and earning the ex-Confederate

his first victory against the North.

A lot of the guys who became outlaws,

Jesse James and so forth, they were all part of the Confederate Army.

And when the Union won that war,

robbing banks was their way

of continuing the fight of the Confederacy.

The crime makes headlines across the state,

turning Jesse into a wanted criminal.

All right, it's on you, Frank.

There it is.

It's a good day to be Frank James, you know.

Jesse James certainly had a very specific idea.

He was going to take the money that he felt was taken from him during the Civil War.

The press got wind of that.

And once they started reading their own stuff,

they were, "Yeah, I'm right. You know, I was questioning

whether or not I should have robbed that bank, but now I know I'm right."

With his reputation growing,

Jesse James is fanning the flames of rebellion in the South.

Over 400 miles away,

the US government is dealing with an even greater problem

than southern uprisings...

as Indian attacks by warriors like Crazy Horse

are slowing down western progress.

But General Ulysses S. Grant has an answer...

Civil War hero George Armstrong Custer.

Grant was quite happy with the performance of Custer.

Custer was one of the great heroes during the Civil War.

He was also willing to do whatever was necessary

to deal with the Indian issue right now.

For Custer, it's the opportunity

he's been waiting for to step back into the spotlight.

For months, Custer has been hunting bands of Indians

across the southern plains...

Halt!

...but hasn't been able to track them down.

I think Custer had the same ambitions

that any long-term military officer had.

That was to advance in rank.

Advance in rank and to win laurels, win glory.

That was hard to do in the post-Civil War West.

I mean, you weren't meeting a foe that was lined up

with 10,000 men on the field of battle.

You were meeting a very elusive foe.

So I think Custer was frustrated often

with what he wanted to do, and I think he wanted glory.

Finally, Custer catches a break.

His regiment discovers a band of Cheyenne Indians

camped near the Washita River

suspected of attacking settlers and troops.

Get the men ready.

Half an hour.

I want to hit them with everything we've got.

You have your orders.

Yes, sir.

Desperate for another chance at greatness,

Custer prepares a surprise attack.

Custer is quite consciously, I think, very aggressive

in his war against Indians

because he's really trying to reclaim the glory

that he experienced during the Civil War

when he was this American hero.

It's only been three years since the Civil War ended.

But now with Custer riding into a battle for glory...

and Jesse James inciting a rebellion in the South...

America is on the brink of fighting a two-front war.