Kevin Costner's The West

What would cause you to leave your family and your home

and travel to a place

where almost no one speaks your language?

No one looks like you.

Your customs are foreign,

and where if you get in trouble,

no one you know is around to help.

For many, what drove them west was the promise of land.

For a few, it was their faith,

and that's what moved Christian missionaries Narcissa

and Marcus Whitman to travel across the continent.

Their journey along the Oregon trail

will inspire thousands to follow,

and spark a fateful encounter with a native nation

that redefines the pacific northwest.

People live on myths,

and the myths that really stick in the American experience

are the myths of the west.

The mountains were taller, the deserts were harsher.

The snows were deeper.

American west conjures wonder, possibility, opportunity.

The figure of the mountain man.

Notorious outlaws.

The cowboy.

The discovery of gold in California.

This train of wagons trailing across the prairie.

Everybody has a reason for wanting this land.

But most of that land was already occupied.

We have been residents for more than 10,000 years.

But this is a clash of two different ways

of seeing life itself, fighting for the future

of your homeland on the one side,

and fighting for the destiny of the new republic

on the other side.

The history of the west is a creation story.

It's a creation of what we think of as modern america.

The west is a place where anything is possible.

It is the essence of the American dream.

The core of this is, what are we to be as a nation?

The reckoning is coming.

The west is this canvas

on which American dreams become larger than life.

The year is 1836,

the final year of Andrew Jackson's presidency.

The us now has 24 states

and four territories stretching

across the Mississippi river,

but the Americans have their eyes on the pacific coast.

California is part of Mexico,

but Oregon country is up for grabs.

Settlement had been continuous

from the Virginia coastline,

the Massachusetts coastline, even across the Mississippi.

Then you run into this arid region,

from the edge of the great plains till you get

to the rainy side of the mountains in Oregon.

And so in the 1830s, the settlement has

to make this big jump if you're gonna,

if you're farmers looking for land.

This is the green place beyond the great American desert

where if you can just get there,

there's a possibility of a life ahead.

Oregon country stretches

from the continental divide to the pacific coast,

and from the northern edge

of California all the way up to Alaska.

Britain and america both lay claim

to the region simply for having explored it.

In 1792, fur trader Robert gray was the first American

to navigate into the Columbia river,

which he named after his ship.

Britain traces its claim to the voyage

of captain James cook, who sailed to Vancouver in 1778,

but after the two nations clash in the war of 1812,

neither side wants to fight again.

And so in 1818, they agree

to jointly occupy the pacific northwest.

The British have a much bigger settlement imprint

on the west coast.

The Hudson bay company was one

of these Canadian fur companies

that has a fairly elaborate infrastructure

in the Oregon country.

The us doesn't have much at all.

There was this national incentive

to put Americans on the ground there.

If the place fills up with Americans,

then the United States is gonna have a better claim

than the British.

The first men to arrive in Oregon country

are explorers, trappers, and traders.

They send back stories of fertile lands,

rich and natural resources.

You could get land cheap in the west,

and you could get land in Oregon free.

You could just go out there and claim it,

because Americans at that time did not recognize

that the native American peoples living on any territory

had title to the land.

The expansive land that was known

to our people was millions of acres from the source

of the Columbia river in British Columbia to the ocean.

We're the only people in that landscape

who have been residents for more than 10,000 years.

For Americans, the most direct route

to the pacific coast is an arduous journey.

Over land across two mountain ranges.

Do you have the courage to make the trip?

But then the missionaries begin to arrive.

There's a series of events toward the end

of the first third of the 19th century.

It's called the second great awakening.

It's the revival of Evangelical christianity,

a belief in the literal veracity of the gospels

and the Bible, but also a call

to bring others to the Christian faith.

It really inflames a lot of individuals,

and you're excited to take all of this fervor,

all this fire, all this passion,

and disseminate the word into foreign lands,

and at that particular time,

foreign land was anything west of the Mississippi.

The whole idea is to convert the Indians.

Now, if in fact they also facilitate the settlement

of Oregon by other white people, I mean that's good too.

Missionaries are hearing a story that,

to them, is so delicious.

They hear that four Indians

from the pacific northwest traveled to St. Louis

to get more information about christianity.

If somebody says, "bring the gospel to us,"

how, as a good Evangelical Christian, how can you say no?

We weren't looking for a different god.

We were looking for the source of the white men's power

that allowed them to have these technologies

that we did not have, their guns and their metal kettles

and their steel traps, you name it.

The christians mistakenly believe

that the native visitors speak for all indigenous people

of the pacific northwest.

The call to mission sounds out across the eastern states.

For Narcissa prentiss, a young woman in upstate New York,

it strikes a chord.

She leads revivals, she teaches Sunday school,

and so she becomes very dedicated to the idea

that a missionary vocation

is really the right thing for her.

She writes a letter requesting support

from the church mission board.

The American board of

commissioners for foreign missions

would gather money to support protestant missions

to spread the gospel abroad,

but also in the American west on the frontier.

In 1836, women had so few rights in america.

They could not own property if they were married.

They could not write a legal contract,

and the most important thing is they could not vote,

which meant that they couldn't change their lot in life.

This is why it's so incredible that Narcissa,

as a single woman, was planning to go

by herself over to Oregon.

The missionary board tells Narcissa

they will not send a woman into Indian country

unless she is married.

Marcus Whitman is a 32-year-old doctor

in upstate New York.

He is an Evangelical Christian.

But he's bored by being a doctor.

There's no excitement in it.

He applies to the American missionary board,

and they're not too keen on sending him out as a single man.

And so they encourage him to get married,

and he finds a suitable candidate in the figure

of Narcissa prentiss.

You need a husband, I need a wife.

And so they get together, they get married,

and then they present themselves to the mission board.

And the mission board at this point can't say no.

It's a 3,000 mile journey to Oregon country.

The day after their wedding,

Marcus and Narcissa leave the comfort

and safety of western New York,

and travel to Liberty, Missouri,

a town on the western edge of American settlement.

They had to go by horse and wagon,

and then they had to go by canal barges,

move sometimes on sleighs, and then when the horse

and wagon didn't work, they'd have to walk.

They're subject to the heat and the rain and the snow.

It's incomprehensible.

Narcissa kept a journal of her travels.

I think I shall endure the journey well,

perhaps better than any of the rest of us.

It seems to me now that we

are on the very borders of civilization.

They go with another couple,

reverend Henry spalding and his wife Eliza.

It's a seven-month journey.

In the early 1830s, there really wasn't much