PBS Ken Burns The West 4of9 Death Runs Riot 1995 DVD 720p Egilman

The West— is a documentary film about the American Old West. It was directed by Stephen Ives, the executive producer was Ken Burns and the narrator was Peter Coyote. The film originally aired on PBS in September 1996.

Stephen Ives and Ken Burns had worked together on several films, including The Civil War (1990) and Baseball (1994). In 1988, Ives created his own production company, Insignia Films, and began working on The West as director, with Burns signed on to the project as executive producer. In order to create The West, the film crew traveled over 100,000 miles (160,000 km) via airplane, conducted 72 interviews, visited 74 archives and collections, and filmed more than 250 hours of footage. The film's production was funded by General Motors.

Episode 4: Death Runs Riot (1856–1868 )

Aired, September 18th 1996; Narrator Peter Coyote

Episode Four covers the period from 1856 to 1868 -- during which the new communities of the West found themselves racked by divisive hatreds and social unrest. The boom was far outpacing any government attempts to regulate the new territories from Washington, so the outlaw justice that would fuel so much of our mythology about the West reigned. Local leaders fought bitterly over the issue of slavery -- which would also be an important contributor to the civil war exploding back east -- and self-governing communities obsessed with maintaining their land and their absolute freedom were at each other's throats. Specific topics include: the Civil War battle at Glorietta Pass, the Mountain Meadows massacre in Utah, the 1864 massacre of a Cheyenne camp by Colonel John Chivington, Juan Cortina's attempted revolt against American power in Texas, a young Samuel Clemens' infatuation with the Western landscape, and the beginning of Custer's campaign against Native American warriors.

Specs and Sample Images