Into the Wild Frontier

While the majority of the series seems to be really well-developed, the producers lost my respect when I see Shoshone Indians meeting Lewis and Clark with double-rigged Western Saddles and metal curb bits in their horses mouths. If you are aiming for authenticity, you'd better go all the way. Even in the John Colter episode, they are using saddles that hadn't been developed yet for the next 20 years, and those brand-spanking new saddles on their horses were a far cry from the big heavy square-skirted saddles that the Texas cowpunchers were using. My husband now refuses to even watch the series, so I'm having to sneak in an episode when I can. :/

Excellent watchable and educational.

Historians narrate events in American History as factually as you've ever thought you already knew.

Dramatizations are either SNL type parodies of an actual dramatization, or someone deliberately made them cheesy enough to see where the line is with subtle comedy.

I discovered this series.

I do mountain man reanacting and love this stuff.

But I'm not sure Indians had western saddles with horns.

The scenery is amazing.

Wish it told who played , I have read the journals.

Great story telling that really gives you a sense of what drove these men and women west.

To those who have been questioning how the American Indians had guns as early as Lewis and Clark, the answer is the Spanish and French were out there decades before Americans and traded and coexisted mostly peacefully with them. There were fights but nothing compared to what happened with Americans.

The series shows thatbtrade and commerce were important to the Indians and what they could not trade they took, and rightfully so.

My only complaint would be I wish they had told the stories chronologically. Bouncing from 1820 in season 1 to 1750s in season 2 took away from the feel of westward expansion.

I find it funny how the director/producer equipped all natives with flintlock rifles. When (Ep4) Lewis/Clark reach Idaho and the Shoshone tribe how is it that 80% of the tribe meeting the expedition already had rifles in hand? It's 1805! They were fat and few between at that point in our history, especially in the mountainous northwest. Civilians traveling in that area didn't happen until pioneers started going west in the 1830's-1840's.

I found it interesting that Jim Bridger (Ep2) actually left a man behind to die even after he himself had to traverse the wild naked after being tortured by the Blackfeet and reach other trappers/traders of his main group.