End Of The Trail

The NBC News Project Twenty productions of the 1950s and 1960s created the world of the historical documentary for prime time TV. The series derived its title from the century in which we live, and put together, these programs add up to the composite drama of our age. This is the series that first perfected techniques of combining archival film and scanned still photos with a rich musical score and compelling narration. Winner of almost every major broadcasting award, including the Emmy, the Peabody, and Robert J. Flaherty Awards, Project Twenty set the standards against which all subsequent documentaries are measured.

End Of The Trail was the first honest, soul-searching account of an inglorious chapter in American history, the treatment of the American Indian during the great Westward migrations. Graphic still photos and narratives gleaned from personal diaries debunk the myths of the Hollywood Western. Sioux, Comanche, Apache, and countless other tribes were stripped of their dignity, religious freedom, and way of life under the onslaught of Manifest Destiny. A procession of broken treaties and misunderstandings escalated into conflicts that ended in legendary battlefields like Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee. Recounted sympathetically by narrator Walter Brennan, this tragic period comes to life through magnificent images of Native Americans, frontier settlers, U.S. Calvary and corpse strewn battlefields as a proud people wage a losing battle to preserve an ancient way of life and protect their sacred lands.