Gstay tuned: Horizon: An American Saga, in cinemas on June 28, is a new American Civil War-era Western film directed, co-written, starring, and produced by Kevin Costner. Horizon: An American Saga is the first of four films in this project, the second part will be released in cinemas on August 16th.
Hollywood has a long history of romanticizing the American West, particularly by propagating the myth that much of it was empty wilderness in the mid-19th century. In fact, the opposite was true: The region was populated by Native Americans, Asian immigrants, and descendants of Spanish settlers trying to eke out a living. Costner says in the press notes that he didn’t want to make another film that looked back on that era as a simpler time. He wanted to show how complicated it was and highlight how all of these groups came into conflict with each other. horizon is a very brutal film.
Costner’s most famous western is the 1990 Dances with wolvesthe second Native American film to win Best Picture (after Cimarron in 1931). As TIME wrote in a review, the film’s goal is “to make us think about the cost of fencing in our former vastness and degrading the people who lived in it.”
To learn more about what actually happened in the Western United States during the early years of the Civil War, TIME spoke with Civil War historian Megan Kate Nelson, author of The Three Country War: The Union, the Confederacy and the Native Americans in the fight for the West.
Who is who in horizon
Spanning three hours, the film follows several different characters on their way to a settlement called Horizon, lured by an airman who promised land to anyone brave enough to make the journey.
After her husband is killed on their journey west, Frances Kittredge (played by Sienna Miller) and her daughter Elizabeth Kittredge (Georgia MacPhail) are taken in by the Army at Fort Gallant. The two women become beloved members of the community, reminding the soldiers of the daughters and wives they left behind at home.
Costner plays Hayes Ellison, a loner who moves to Horizon to start a new life. He is joined by a woman named Marigold (Abbey Lee), who worked as a prostitute in a mining town called Watts Parrish, which is said to be located in present-day Wyoming.
There is the British couple Hugh Proctor (Tom Payne) and Juliette Chesney (Ella Hunt), who are inspired by the ideals of a new beginning, but have no survival skills and annoy their fellow travelers in the covered wagon by not even being able to fetch water themselves.
The film employed several Native American culture consultants and Native American actors who learned the White Mountain Apache dialect for their roles. For example, actor Tatanka Means plays Taklishim, an Apache who lives in the mountains of what is now Arizona and tries to protect his family from the settlers.
The civil war in the context of horizon
The four-part horizon The series is set during the Civil War (1861 to 1865), with the first part beginning in 1859, shortly before the war began. The war went beyond the fighting between the North and the South and also took place in the western territories.
“All of the arguments about slavery between Northern and Southern politicians are about the expansion of slavery into territories,” Nelson says. “The Confederacy was very interested in taking control of the West because they wanted gold mines. They wanted ports on the Pacific. And the Confederacy wanted a coast-to-coast nation so that it would be more legitimate and recognized.”
Settlers moving west wanted a new life and were primarily looking for gold, Nelson said. There was the California Gold Rush in the 1840s, a major gold rush in Colorado in the late 1850s and another gold rush in Montana in 1863.
Chinese workers are portrayed in horizonAccording to Nelson, they originally came to California for the gold rush and then settled in mining towns in Montana and Utah. In the film, they are simple workers who are yelled at for not speaking English. In reality, they started their own businesses, such as laundries, restaurants and saloons.
But western settlers were directly involved in the war. In fact, a civil war within the civil war broke out in New Mexico in the 1860s. The Union recruited Native Americans as spies and formed an army in Colorado made up of a mix of Hispanics and whites who ended up in the West looking for gold. In the 1860s, white settlers adopted the Indian war practice of scalping – killing their enemies and then scalping them.
The only territory the Confederacy managed to gain during this period was what is now Arizona. But in the end, the Union won the Civil War and its commissioners were placed in the settlements in the West to ensure that slavery was not introduced in these areas.
However, Nelson points out that Native Americans were never fully allied with the Union Army, as they viewed them as invaders. For example, when the U.S. government began building the transcontinental railroad (1863-1869), attacked railroad surveyors. Apaches demanded tolls from gold miners on the routes between Texas and California and forced them to hand over their food, weapons and horses.
In horizonmost of the time spent with the Native American characters is shown attacking white settlers. Costner said he wanted to portray the Native American as someone who was literally fighting for their lives and dignity. But in press notes, he also acknowledges, “I don’t claim to be the best person to do that exactly.”
Regarding his approach to this four-part epic in general, he said: “I think in some ways I’m someone who just had to go west myself, not knowing what was out there and not being afraid of it.”
