How the West Was Won
- G
- Year:
- 1962
- 164 min
- 1,075 Views
This land has a name today
and is marked on maps.
But the names and the marks and the land
all had to be won.
Won from nature and from primitive man.
Five generations ago,
a mere 125 years back...
... this land was known
only as the West.
Known only to a handful of white men...
... lonely trappers wandering its vastness
in search of beaver.
They were known as mountain men,
a new breed.
Men like Jim Bridger,
Franchre and Sublette, Linus Rawlings.
More Indian than the Indians
in all but blood.
They held to no law but their own...
... drifted free as the clouds,
settled nowhere, kept forever on the move.
Their mocassined feet and unshod horses
leaving no trace on the land.
Like the Indians,
with whom they were at peace...
... they wanted nothing beyond
what they found, and little of that.
The mountains, the forests,
the harsh country...
... were as unchanging to them
as the stars...
... and just as unyielding.
Far behind the mountains,
beyond the rolling plains...
... they had left the people of the East,
people who were restless in another way.
The kind who'd look at a mountain
and see a watershed...
... look at a forest
and see lumber for houses...
... look at a stony field and see a farm.
Their faces and their instincts
had been turned to the West...
... ever since Plymouth Rock
and Jamestown.
The trapper's road was the trail
of a wolf or the bend of a canyon.
But for whole families
chaffing to follow the sun...
... there had to be broader ways.
There were no roads into the wilderness,
only rivers.
And they flowed in the wrong direction:
North or south.
Or else they stopped at the Alleghenies.
Until one day, a new river took source
in the mind of a man named DeWitt Clinton.
He conceived of a river
that would go west.
And in the way Americans have
of acting out their dreams, it came to be.
The Erie Canal left the Hudson
above Albany...
... and carried clear across
to the Great Lakes.
People who yearned for virgin land
and a new life...
... now had a highway to take them.
And they moved along.
Pride of Utica now loading!
All aboard for the Pride of Utica!
The Ramsey family, Peter Smith...
...the Skoga family!
All eight of them!
All aboard for the Pride of Utica!
Is the laddie's health
the reason you're heading west?
Partly.
Only partly.
Mostly our trouble East was rocks.
I had me a farm where some years
I'd raise 100 bushels of rocks to the acre.
Zebulon, you hadn't
ought to lie to the man like that.
Wife, I'm a God-fearing soul,
and I tell the truth as I see it.
Now, I never used a plow.
I'd blast out the furrows with gunpowder.
And then one morning,
I hauled the bucket up out of the well...
...and so help me,
the bucket was full of rocks.
Rocks.
I just stood there right still
trying not to blaspheme.
I said to myself,
"You've got a son that's ailing...
...you've got a daughter
what won't take to herself a husband."
- There she sits there, mooning as usual.
- Pa.
You've got another who don't seem
quite right in the head.
Lilith?
Yes, Pa?
Now, I'll remind you, sir.
I'm still standing there
holding a bucket full of rocks...
...and staring into a bleak old age.
So I made me a vow
right then and there. I said:
"If I can find a man with $500
who likes rocks...
...then there's gonna be another fool
owning this farm."
Well, sir, the Lord provided such a man...
...and here I am.
He ain't told you one word of truth,
Mr. Harvey.
We had the best farm in the township.
Yeah, Rockville Township it was.
Stone County.
Oh, it was not.
It was his itching foot
that brought us here.
Heaven knows where we'll end up.
Oh, these are my laddies.
Angus, Brutus and Colin.
- How do you do?
- Hello.
I think they're already acquainted
with your daughters.
- Be they single?
- Aye, single so far.
Well, this Illinois country's beginning
to sound better to me.
Lilith?
Lilith, here. Strike up a little tune
for these handsome lads.
- Oh, I ain't in no mood, Pa.
- Lilith, there's a time for coaxing...
...this ain't the time.
All right.
All right.
A captain bold in Halifax
Betrayed a maid who hanged herself
One morning in her garters...
Lilith.
Now, you know better
than to sing a song like that.
- What ones do you know?
- We know "Yankee Doodle."
- "Yankee Doodle"?
- Their mother's dead.
They haven't had much learning
in the social graces.
All right, give them
"A Home in the Meadow."
Eve, come on, you too.
That's it.
Come on, join in.
That's it.
Come on.
Stop.
Loading for the Flying Arrow!
All aboard for the Flying Arrow!
- The Prescott family!
- Here we be. Come on.
Jeffrey Rose and family!
But the canal was only the first step
toward the promised land.
The next steps were longer and harder.
Those who could raise the fare
went by steamboat to the end of the line.
Others found a cheaper way
to head for Ohio, Illinois...
... and the open spaces beyond.
Lilith. Lilith, listen to this:
"Theirs was a poignant parting
in the forest.
The handsome young backwoodsman
carved two hearts on a tree trunk...
...then from ten paces, hurled a knife
at the junction of the two hearts."
Junction. What's that?
Well, that's where the two hearts meet.
Now, listen:
"His marksmanship was uncanny.
Three times he hurled the knife on target.
'That was for luck,, he said the first time.
'That was for love. Deep, divine love"
he said the second.
And the third time, 'That was a prayer,
a plea for love undying."'
Isn't that beautiful?
I reckon. If anybody ever talks like that.
Well, it's the sentiments, not the talk.
There ain't no sense to you, Eve.
You wanna to be a farm wife,
but you don't wanna marry a farmer.
Neither do you.
Of course not.
I don't wanna have
nothing to do with farms.
I want silk dresses and fine carriages
and a man to smell good.
What I want's back East, not West.
But I'll get there yet. You watch.
You don't know what you want yet.
It's the man that counts,
not where he lives.
- Ready, now?
Ready.
Daddy, Daddy, something coming upriver.
Hostile Indians, I suspect.
- Could it be river pirates, Zebulon?
- Don't know.
They say no honest man
travels this river at night.
I can only see one man, Pa.
I hear that's a favorite pirate trick.
They hide in the bottom of the boat...
...till they're ready to jump you.
- Get my gun, Colin.
- All right, Pa.
Just come in slow and easy, stranger.
And keep your hands
where we can see them.
Name's Linus Rawlings.
I'm hungrier than sin
and real peaceful like.
- What have you got in the craft?
- Beaver pelts.
I said beaver pelts.
I never had a chance to see a beaver pelt,
Mr. Rawlings.
Well, in that case, ma'am,
I'll show you one.
There you are.
That's real soft.
It's a fine pelt, ma'am.
Now, my apologies, sir.
- We was afeared you might be a pirate.
- I ain't no pirate.
Come on, let's have supper
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"How the West Was Won" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/how_the_west_was_won_10296>.
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