The Civil War has ended, leaving more than 600,000 American soldiers dead. In a single decade, from 1860 to 1870, the South's wealth declined 60 percent and that of the North had a 50 percent increase. One president has been assassinated and another impeached. The foundation for the women's suffrage movement was laid when women were introduced into new fields like nursing and teaching. In the late nineteenth century, the United States went through many changes. Blacks were organizing union leagues, while the Ku Klux Klan was forming. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were passed, establishing the full emancipation of slaves, assuring all citizens equality before the law, and allowing all male American citizens the right to vote, regardless their race. What was happening out west during this time or reconstruction? Many Hollywood producers, during the twentieth century, have tried to recreate an old west on the big screen.

One of these attempts was the television show, "Maverick". The show first aired in September of 1957, staring an unconventional hero who rather play tricks and win card games than fight with a brother who shared the same char

In 1955, popular western director, John Ford teamed up with longtime friend John Wayne to make "The Searchers", based on the novel by Alan LeMay. It tells a story of Comanche Indians, whom are seen as "lions", whom burn down a home of white residents and kidnap the two young daughters leaving the rest of the family dead. Two men, who were the girls' close relatives, spend five years searching for them. During which they find one of the girls was dead and land themselves in several compromising situations. They end up buying an Indian woman as a wife, by accident, and killing a man who gave them valuable information. When they finally do find the missing daughter, they storm through the Indian campground and kill everyone and thing in sight. John Milius, one of the actors, stated," If you're an Indian, you want to be like Scar, you'd want to blow that horn, slaughter white settlers relentlessly, take many scalps and have young wives, you'd want to look like scar."7 Scar was the chief of the Comanche Indians, and the one who held the young girl captive. During the movie, Ethan, John Wayne's character, displayed some stereotypical behavior of a white male at the time. When they came across some white women who were held captive by Scar and seemed mentally disabled, Ethan said, "They ain't white anymore, they're Comanche. Living with Comanche ain't being alive."7 He also showed his pride from his country when he stated, "You speak good American" after hearing a man speak English.7

1. Tuska, Jon. The American West In Film: Critical Approaches to the Western (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985),224.

6. Unforgiven, director Clint Eastwood, 130 min, 1992, videocassette.

4. Weinraub, Bernard. "Eastwood in Another Change Of Pace," The New York Times, 6 August 1992, C, 13:1.

In 1992, Clint Eastwood, the John Wayne of the nineties, directed and stared in "Unforgiven". Portraying t

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