Kevin Costner's the West (2025) s01e06 Episode Script

By the middle of the 19th century,
the United States has
claimed the entire continent
from the Atlantic coast all
the way to the pacific ocean,
but every step west deepens a conflict
that has divided the
nation from its earliest days.
Northern states see the west as a place
where settlers can make a
living by working their own land.
While southern states want to extend
their plantation economies
and expand slavery into the west.
When Kansas territory is
opened up to settlers in 1854,
abolitionist John brown
launches a crusade
to keep slavery out.
His violent actions will shock the nation
and interrupt the settlement
of the American west.
People live on myths,
and the myths that really
stick in the American experience
are the myths of the west.
The mountains were taller,
the deserts were harsher,
the snows were deeper.
American west conjures
wonder, possibility, opportunity.
The figure of the mountain man.
Notorious outlaws.
The cowboy.
The discovery of gold in California.
This train of wagons
trailing across the prairie.
Everybody has a reason
for wanting this land.
But most of that land
was already occupied.
We have been residents
for more than 10,000 years.
This is a clash of two different ways
of seeing life itself,
fighting for the future
of your homeland on the one side.
And fighting for the destiny
of the new republic on the other side.
The history of the
west is a creation story.
It's the creation of what we
think of as modern america.
The west is a place
where anything is possible.
It is the essence of the American dream.
The core of this is, what
are we to be as a nation?
The reckoning is coming.
The west is this canvas
on which American dreams
become larger than life.
By the late 1840s, the
westward movement
of the United States
has become unstoppable.
In a single term at the white house,
president James k. Polk sees the largest
territorial expansion in American history.
A treaty with britain gives
him what's now Oregon
and a victory in the
Mexican-American war
reshapes the nation by
adding present day California,
Utah, Arizona, new Mexico,
and most of Colorado.
But with this unprecedented
growth comes instability,
raising questions about
the future of the nation.
In the 19th century, the issue of slavery
is literally linked to everything,
including westward expansion.
As new territory is acquired,
the big question on the table is,
will those become free states
or will they become slave states?
Since long before the revolutionary war,
slavery has been an undeniable
part of america's identity.
And the south's
economy is deeply rooted
in slavery and cotton.
It's hard for us in the 21st century
to understand the importance of cotton.
Cotton really is king.
Cotton was producing
60% of American exports.
It was central to the American economy.
Slavery is essential to
the growing of cotton,
but slavery is just
corroding American life.
By the 1840s, the debate over slavery
threatens to tear the nation apart.
It results in the fracture
of political parties.
It splits families, it creates zealots.
It is the battle for the soul of america
by two competing ideologies,
two competing visions
of what america can be.
By 1850, there are roughly
three million enslaved
people in the American south.
Southerners see a future with
slaves working on plantations
in the west and mines in California.
But in the north, slavery is
considered a national sin.
The institution has been
banned in 15 northern states,
and many northerners
want to prevent slavery
from spreading into the new territories.
There's an emerging idea
in america called free soil,
and this is an idea that
says everything in the west,
every unorganised piece of
territory in the United States
ought to be free soil.
It should be free of slavery.
Free soilers, they oppose slavery
not because they are
sympathetic to blacks.
They are opposed to
the institutional slavery
dominating the areas where they live.
But there's another
anti-slavery group in the north.
They oppose slavery on moral grounds
and want to outlaw it outright.
The abolitionists.
Abolitionism before the civil war
is still kind of a fringe position.
So the abolitionists are
fighting an uphill battle,
a David and Goliath
battle of the first order.
And on the front lines of that battle
is a man named John brown.
John brown believed that every
black man, woman, and child
needs to be a free person
with equal rights and status
and voting power and everything else
as anybody else in america,
and we are not free
until this is abolished.
He seems to have this
charismatic streak in him
that certain people were willing to follow.
And if he says, "why
are you not joining me
in the fight against slavery?"
You'd really be asking
yourself, "gee, you know, why?
I mean, I should."
John brown made them believe
that this was something
that they needed to do.
You can only understand
John brown's views on slavery
and on race if you
understand the kind of religion
that he grew up in,
strict calvinists, but their
calvinism was one that said
the most important part of
your christianity is the degree
to which you treat everybody around you,
regardless of race, condition,
status, as your equal.
John brown marries
and has several children,
but his first wife dies.
He then remarries and
he and his second wife
have an additional 13 children,
but seven of them die either at childbirth
or in early childhood.
Brown is so familiar with illness and loss.
I think that brown's personal
experience of suffering
makes him deeply sensitive to the pain
and suffering to all of the enslaved,
especially of children.
As the country pushes west,
the slavery question
ignites fierce passions
on both sides of the issue.
So far, the federal
government has managed
to keep an equal number of
free states and slave states.
But each time a new
territory is up for statehood,
it triggers a national debate,
leading to a series of compromises.
So one of the first big ones is
the Missouri compromise of 1820.
They established that Maine
will come in as a free state,
Missouri will come in as a slave state,
and they'll draw a line
on the 3630 parallel
on the southern border of Missouri.
Everything below this
line is a slave state.
Everything above it is a free state.
This balance holds for 30 years
until gold-rich California
seeks to enter the union.
The admission of California
to the union would mean a free state,
and that would tip the
balance in congress.
And that was something
the southern states
could not possibly accept.
Congress passes the
compromise of 1850.
And Henry Clay comes along,
"the man in a crisis"
as Lincoln often said,
and he's able to author a series of bills
which gives things to both sides.
California comes in as a free state,
but Utah and new Mexico
will come in as slave territories.
The deal adds California as a free state,
but slave states demand
something even more.
In the deal is the fugitive slave act,
which the southerners love.
If you have a runaway slave,
they would have to be returned.
The fugitive slave act is the thing
that most incited people like John brown.
The other is the dred Scott decision
where the supreme court
makes a shattering decision
that blacks are not even citizens.
These things coming
together deepen brown's feeling
that violence is the only answer.
Still, the compromises have managed
to keep political peace
between the north and south.
But in 1854, the issue of slavery
is thrust back into the national spotlight.
In 1854, senator Stephen
a. Douglas of Illinois,
who's one of the big movers
and shakers in congress,
has visions, as do many people,
of a transcontinental railroad.
The region along the proposed route
is unorganised territory occupied by
dozens of native tribes.
If Douglas wants to build his railroad,
he'll have to find a way
to organise the land.
So in 1854, he introduces
the Kansas-Nebraska act.
It would repeal the Missouri compromise
and create two new territories,
putting them both on a
path towards statehood.
Douglas comes up with what
he thinks is a simple solution.
He will allow the people
in Kansas and Nebraska
to decide for themselves
whether they'll be free
states or slave states.
This proposal touches
off the usual firestorm,
which is, okay, new
states, but what kind?
For northerners, you're
taking away something
they thought they had.
This promise that that northern part
of the Louisiana purchase would be free.
Now it's potentially open to slavery.
So they say, "we've been betrayed.
We're having to re fight a
battle we fought 30 years ago."
Stephen Douglas believes
this will solve the problem
because there will be civil debate
and the majority will win.
He has no idea that
he's basically touched off
a period of intense frontier violence.
After a fierce debate in the senate,
the Kansas-Nebraska
act passes in may of 1854
and the territories are opened
up for American settlement.
Most Americans assume that
Nebraska will be a free state
because it's located so far north,
but the fate of Kansas is not so clear.
There's gonna be a vote very soon
to determine the state legislature,
and the question is, will they
be a pro-slavery legislature
or will they be an
anti-slavery legislature?
Whoever gets there
first with the most people,
the pro-slavery folks
or the anti-slavery folks,
they will be the ones to write the rules
when Kansas becomes a state.
So there's a race to Kansas,
not only among legitimate settlers,
people who want to go there and live,
but by people who want to go
and make a statement for their position.
Before the act is even passed,
powerful anti-slavery
activists in the north raise funds
to send over 1,000
free staters to Kansas
to settle the lands, including
five of John brown's sons.
At the same time, hundreds
of pro-slavery settlers
rush in from Missouri.
Missouri is a slave state,
and the pro-slavery forces,
the so-called border ruffians
can just rush right over the border.
Border ruffians was the term
that was used in the press
to describe the armed, violent,
often drunken missourians
who rode into Kansas
and intimidated the free state settlers.
Southerners really believe that
if they lose this battle, slavery will end.
Northerners understood this too,
that if they could stop slavery in Kansas,
that they could probably
stop the spread of slavery.
So both sides are filled
with an enormous level
of righteousness and
moral fervour over this.
But the west is the great prize.
There's the north, there's the
south, they both want the west.
With critical elections looming in Kansas,
border ruffians from
Missouri are determined
to beat the free state majority
by any means necessary.
Border ruffians
intimidate election officials,
stuff ballot boxes.
And lo and behold, the
results show their success.
It's an overwhelmingly pro-slavery
territorial legislature.
They drop a constitution,
the lecompton constitution,
which entails death
penalties in many cases
for any kind of anti-slavery activity.
Opponents of slavery are outraged,
and so they actually organise
their own territorial election
and elect a rival government
in Lawrence, Kansas
filled with anti-slavery
territorial legislators.
Now, there are two rival
legislatures in Kansas
and neither one is backing down.
John brown, Jr. writes
a letter to his father.
Basically it says,
"we're outgunned, we're out-intimidated.
We're gonna be killed
basically, unless you come
and bring us weapons.
Come join us."
Kansas is ground zero of
the struggle over slavery,
the future of the country as far as
people like John brown are concerned.
How Kansas goes is
how the nation goes.
You've gotta go to Kansas
if you're really committed to the cause.
John brown makes the
arduous two-month journey
over 1,300 miles from
the east coast to Kansas.
Along the way, he stops in
Ohio to load up on weapons
and hides them in his wagon.
Finally, in October of 1855,
brown arrives to fight alongside his sons.
The battle over Kansas was a battle
over much more than Kansas.
It was a battle over the whole west.
What happens in Kansas
is kind of a mini civil war,
a dress rehearsal for what will come
across the entire country.
It's a struggle for control of the land.
By now, there's a pro-slavery capital
in lecompton, Kansas,
and just 13 miles away,
there's a rival anti-slavery
legislature based in Lawrence.
But the us president, Franklin
Pierce, is a northern democrat
and a southern sympathiser
whose administration
is staunchly pro-slavery.
The pro-slavery people win.
It's the border ruffians, the missourians,
who dominate the political
discussion in the first years
after the Kansas-Nebraska act.
But those against slavery know
they have the true majority
and refuse to give up.
If either side loses this, in a sense,
they lose the future of america,
and so they're gonna fight it out.
Free state and pro-slavery partisans
established claims to
land and began to work land
sometimes right next
door to one another.
And they argued.
They get engaged in
clashes, raids on each other,
assassinations, and all of that bloodshed
gets covered in the newspapers.
News of the conflict spreads quickly
thanks to the electric telegraph.
By 1852, there are 23,000
miles of telegraph lines
reaching from the east
coast across the Mississippi.
For the first time,
information moved faster than people.
The telegraph increased
the speed of communication
44 million times over the pony express.
That changes everything.
News can be transmitted instantaneously
all over the country as long as
telegraph wires are strung up.
So Kansas became a brawl
that was being watched carefully
throughout the rest of the United States.
By the spring of 1856,
shootouts, beatings,
and assassinations have
become commonplace in Kansas,
but the violence is mostly one-sided.
The vast majority of that
political violence in Kansas
is being carried out
by pro-slavery activists.
In an effort to protect
the anti-slavery population
in Kansas, brown and his
sons put together a small militia.
Meanwhile, the border
ruffians prepare an invasion.
Lawrence, it becomes the beacon
for those who are anti-slavery
and it also becomes anathema
for those who are pro-slavery.
And so the border ruffians feel like
they have to destroy it.
On may 21st, 1856,
border ruffians from Missouri
cross over into Kansas
and attack the town.
And of course, it causes
outrage not only in Kansas
among anti-slavery
forces but anti-slavery folks
all across the country.
The sacking of Lawrence
becomes a flashpoint
in the heated debate around slavery
and how western states
should enter the union.
For men like John brown,
it seems like Kansas
is falling to pro-slavery forces.
Brown says something
has to be done now.
They have to understand
that they cannot continue
to do this with impunity.
John brown decides that now or never,
you've got to strike
back, and to use the term
from our own time, it
has to be shock and awe.
In the summer of 1856,
news of the violent attack
on the anti-slavery headquarters
of Lawrence, Kansas
spreads across america.
Abolitionists fear they're
losing the battle for the future
of the country while pro-slavery
activists grow even bolder.
Weeks later, an act
of savagery in the halls
of the us senate brings
the nation to a boiling point.
Charles Sumner, senator
from Massachusetts,
has given a five-hour
speech condemning the south
for its promotion of slavery in Kansas.
The next day, Sumner is at
his desk in the senate chamber
working on some paperwork,
and Preston Brooks,
congressman from south Carolina,
walks up behind him, and
without any warning at all,
begins to savagely beat
him with a wooden cane.
Sumner is nearly killed.
He's covered with blood.
He's concussed, he's passed out.
But here's the part that
just chills your blood.
This made Preston
Brooks a hero in the south
and pieces of the cane were
cut up and made into rings.
These rings were worn as
necklaces by southerners.
The beating of Sumner
becomes a catalyst
for mobilising public opinion in the north,
but Preston Brooks has
become a hero in the south.
The idea that the same
event could be seen
in two different ways, it
shows that the two sides
are no longer even
speaking the same language,
fanning the flames of the
fire even more in Kansas.
The core of this strikes at
the heart of American values.
Where do we want to be as a nation?
The question at the
time of bleeding Kansas
is being settled in bloodshed
between American citizens.
After the sacking of
Lawrence and the assault
in the senate, John brown decides
there can be no peaceful resolution
to the question of slavery in Kansas.
He gets his sons together,
several other people,
and they decide to stage a
raid against pro-slavery settlers
in a nearby community,
pottawatomie creek.
But at the end of the
day, they're coming up
to make Kansas a slave state,
and brown's not having any of it.
On the night of may 24th, 1856,
John brown and his men sneak into
the settlement of pottawatomie.
They go in the middle of the night
to the home of several
pro-slavery sympathisers
who are homesteading
on the pottawatomie creek.
The person they're really looking for
is a guy named Dutch Henry.
He is a major player
on the pro-slavery side.
That's the real target
that they have in mind.
The first cabin they approach
is owned by a man named James Doyle,
a member of the local
pro-slavery political party.
When Doyle opens the door,
John brown and several
of his followers burst in,
grab Doyle and his two teenage sons.
They dragged them out of the house.
On the command of their father,
John brown's sons hack these
men to death with broadswords.
Brown continues to go house to house
looking for Dutch Henry,
killing a total of five people
in the settlement of
pottawatomie that night.
He never finds his
target, but it doesn't matter.
John brown's point has been made.
This is an act that is often
represented as enraged.
It's not, it's strategic.
John brown, he was
sending a political message
to other potentially pro-slavery settlers.
You come to Kansas,
this could happen to you.
Brown seems to disappear into the night,
but the pottawatomie
massacre makes headlines
across the country, sending
a chill throughout the south.
People don't know for
sure who the perpetrator
of the pottawatomie massacres were,
but they have a pretty good idea
that it was John brown and company.
And so the territorial governor
puts out a $500 reward
on John brown, dead or alive.
John brown is a wanted man,
but he can be found nowhere.
He has disappeared into the
wilderness and eludes capture.
But two of brown's sons aren't as lucky.
Though they weren't directly
involved in the massacre,
Jason and John Jr. are
captured by border ruffians.
They visit a savage
beating upon these two men
and then force them to walk all the way
to the pro-slavery stronghold
of lecompton, Kansas.
While brown's sons are held hostage,
one of the men involved in the capture
goes after John brown himself.
Henry Clay pate comes from
a Virginia slave-holding family.
He ends up making his way to Missouri
where he starts a pro-slavery newspaper
and ends up becoming a
prominent pro-slavery militia leader.
Pate gathers a group of
vigilantes to hunt John brown.
Along the way, he does some burning
of some free state settlements.
And brown learns on June 1st of 1856
that pate and his 60 men are
camped near Blackjack creek
that they're looking for John brown.
And by the way, that
pate had been among
the pro-slavery militias who had captured
John Jr. and Jason.
John brown gathers as
many followers as he can,
amassing a group of 26 men.
He's outnumbered more than two to one,
but he believes that god is on his side
and plans to drive pate
and his men out of Kansas.
He believes, his sons believe,
all the anti-slavery folks believe
that it's not just the fate of Kansas,
it's the macro level fate of the nation
that's gonna be determined
by this new territory.
Brown and his force sneak up on pate
and launch a full-on
attack on the encampment.
The showdown is about to begin.
June 1856.
It's now been two years since
the Kansas-Nebraska act was passed.
Kansas, still not a state,
finds itself at the centre
of an increasingly violent
fight for the future of america.
Bleeding Kansas makes
it clear that the nation
has to make a decision
about what it intends to be.
Is it gonna be a slave-holding republic?
Is it gonna be a nation of freemen?
As america is moving
west, there's almost a seam
that literally opens up in
the fabric of the continent
because it's the free
states and the slave states,
and that divide just keeps pushing west
and pushing west until it
runs into bloody conflict.
On June 2nd, 1856,
John brown leads his
men to Blackjack creek.
He's about to go head-to-head
with pro-slavery leader
Henry Clay pate and 60 men.
So John brown has no
direct military experience,
but he's determined to fight
this by any means necessary.
As John brown's force
approaches pate at Blackjack,
he divides his force as a strategy.
The combined effect of having gunfire
coming from two directions fools pate
into thinking that he's
greatly outnumbered,
which in fact they're not.
And he puts up a flag of surrender.
As a result, brown and
his men take captive
26 missourians whom
they hold for several days
and begin to try to negotiate
with for a captive exchange
for the freedom of brown's sons.
Most of the fighting in
Kansas has been ambushes,
reprisal, counter reprisal,
you know, small group conflict.
What's important about
the battle of Blackjack is that
this is essentially two
small armies squaring off
in fairly standard military fashion.
When news of the battle
spreads throughout the nation,
it polarises the country even more.
Some believe that it's a
precursor to a larger conflict,
an all-out war between
the north and the south.
One of the things that
is an issue in the west,
is there any such thing
really as an American union
in more than name or is the diversity
and sort of polarisation,
something that's gonna
outweigh any sense of unity.
As debate over the future of the west
grows even more heated,
brown's campaign of terror
was starting to see
results in Washington.
President Pierce has
become widely unpopular
due to the violence in Kansas.
More importantly,
1856 is an election year.
Franklin Pierce says we
need to send federal troops in
and disarm everybody and show that
we are the federal
government and we're neutral,
something they'd never done before.
It's a turning point for Kansas.
The us government is no
longer blindly supporting
the pro-slavery side.
Now they're neutral.
This battle turns out to cement
the balance of terror and really be
the tipping point to the advantage
of the free state citizens of Kansas.
Brown has achieved a decisive
anti-slavery victory in Kansas.
His sons are eventually
released from custody.
But despite his success,
brown won't stop.
We get to that point where
we have to come to reckon
with the fact that there
are some evils in the world
that are so very great, that regardless
of our own personal
feelings, we have to go to war.
As debate over slavery
embroils the country,
the us population continues to grow.
Throughout the 1850s,
four million new immigrants
flood into the nation, many
of whom will head west.
Such rapid expansion
brings with it new tensions,
especially in Kansas.
Kansas becomes the first
area in the United States
where pro-slavery people
and anti-slavery people
are occupying literally the same ground.
John brown's
determination to stop slavery
further inflames this conflict.
His exploits have become national news.
At this point in the middle of 1856,
John brown has been involved
in several of these sensational incidents,
and his name has become
a household name in Kansas
and in many ways across the country.
I think he probably becomes
even more famous in the south
than he does in the north.
They believe that
almost every abolitionist
was a budding John brown.
He becomes this sort of larger-than-life
threatening figure, tremendous fear
at the mere mention of his name.
The rumours fly that John
brown and his raiders are nearby
and people believe it
because of the exploits
that they've been reading
about and hearing about.
And he captivated journalists.
Journalists followed him around
and they found themselves
swept up in this as well,
he's a most remarkable individual.
During the summer of 1856,
John brown continues to gather support
and stages raids on
pro-slavery settlements,
not necessarily to kill
people, but to terrorise them.
Whenever possible
during one of these raids,
John brown would actually stop
and lecture the pro-slavery
folks that he was attacking
and give them a lecture
on the evils of slavery
and the need for them to convert
and to see the
waywardness of their ways
and to become advocates of free soil.
The political violence in Kansas
takes its final toll on
the Pierce administration.
Pierce's reputation is so badly tarnished
by bleeding Kansas that
in 1856, he elects not to run,
but endorses James Buchanan
for the Democratic
nomination for the presidency.
But in order for
Buchanan to be successful,
he has to restore faith
in a Democratic party,
and that means
restoring order in Kansas.
Pierce appoints a new territorial governor
to Kansas, John geary.
He plans to disband
militias on both sides
and drive out bands of armed
vigilantes from the territory.
Geary is a republican.
Thousands join the new republican party,
conservatives and
moderates who want to repeal
the Kansas-Nebraska
act and prevent slavery
from extending itself to
the western territories.
The republican party, it's
not an abolitionist party,
but it's an anti-slavery party
that is absolutely committed
to preventing slavery moving
into one inch of free territory.
The whig party is split into factions,
pro-slavery and anti-slavery.
The Democratic party is
forced to choose an identity
and it embraced slavery.
When the border ruffians hear
there's a new republican
governor coming to Kansas,
they spring into action.
Several hundred militia
men unite under the command
of former Mexican
war officer, John Reid,
and they have their eye on osawatomie.
Not only is the town an abolitionist hub,
it's home to John brown's half sister,
and he sometimes uses
her cabin as his headquarters.
Brown and his troops get information
that osawatomie is a target
and so they're there
already when Reid arrives.
On the night of August 29th, 1856,
John brown and his forces camp along
the outskirts of the osawatomie.
But one of his sons stays
in town to mind the horses.
John brown's son,
Frederick, is out on a road
and he encounters some
pro-slavery forces of Reid's.
They shoot him and kill him
and leave him dead in the road.
When John brown learns of
the death of his son Frederick,
he decides the time to attack has arrived.
He rallies his forces at osawatomie
and the battle begins.
In August of 1856, general John w. Reid
moves to attack the anti-slavery town
of osawatomie, Kansas
with over 300 men.
Nothing stands in the way of him
destroying the city, except John brown.
Brown is vastly outnumbered,
but he's beaten these odds before
utilising these guerilla tactics,
and he believes there's no
reason he can't do it again.
One thing that John brown does
that's really smart is he
takes about 38 of his men
and puts them in the nearby tree line
so that they're hidden and
also protected from gunfire.
And as Reid's men approach them,
John brown gives the
signal, they open fire.
Now!
Surprise Reid's men,
kill about 60 of them.
But Reid's forces quickly recover
from the initial surprise attack
and drive brown's militia
back into the woods.
Then, while brown and
his men are retreating,
Reid's men burn the town.
John brown ends up
technically losing the battle,
but even in loss, the
battle builds his fame.
He's now really the face
of anti-slavery activism
and militarism in Kansas.
Because brown was willing
to stand up against
such impossible odds,
he for the rest of his life was
known as osawatomie brown.
Just weeks after the battle,
the new governor arrives
and immediately disbands
both the pro-slavery
and anti-slavery forces.
But despite his efforts, the
violence in Kansas continues,
pushing the federal government to defer
the question of statehood
for Kansas and Nebraska.
For the moment, the
spread of slavery is on pause,
but brown's fight now goes
beyond the American west.
John brown, trading on his Kansas fame,
comes back to the east
and begins to meet with abolitionists
and decides that he's now
going to execute the plan
that he's been formulating
for more than a decade,
to bring the war into the south itself.
In October of 1859,
brown stages a raid
on the federal arsenal
at Harpers ferry, Virginia.
He hopes to trigger a
massive slave uprising,
but the plan quickly goes awry.
Brown is captured and
convicted of treason, murder,
and conspiring with slaves to rebel.
When he's executed in December,
news travels through the country
and brown's reputation is crystallised
as both hero and villain.
I see John brown as a religious zealot.
I see him as someone who has beliefs
that I deplore and beliefs that I admire.
John brown is a necessary
figure in American history.
He is as necessary as
Lincoln was necessary.
We didn't need them to live.
We needed them to do what they did.
Just over a year after
John brown's death,
the fierce debate over slavery
erupts into the bloodiest conflict
in the nation's history, civil war.
In the heat of that battle,
Lincoln signs two acts
he hopes will ensure
that the west remains free.
The homestead act,
which offers 160-acre plots
to settlers for a nominal fee,
and the railroad act, which assigns land
to the transcontinental railroad.
As the union victory
seals the fate of slavery,
these two acts will reignite
westward movement.
And in the coming years,
settlers both white and black
will flood across the continent.
And a nation tired of war
will again confront a
powerful native force,
one that will stop at nothing
to defend its homeland.