Into the Wild Frontier

I discovered this series.

I do mountain man reanacting and love this stuff.

But I'm not sure Indians had western saddles with horns.

The scenery is amazing.

Wish it told who played , I have read the journals.

I find it funny how the director/producer equipped all natives with flintlock rifles. When (Ep4) Lewis/Clark reach Idaho and the Shoshone tribe how is it that 80% of the tribe meeting the expedition already had rifles in hand? It's 1805! They were fat and few between at that point in our history, especially in the mountainous northwest. Civilians traveling in that area didn't happen until pioneers started going west in the 1830's-1840's.

I found it interesting that Jim Bridger (Ep2) actually left a man behind to die even after he himself had to traverse the wild naked after being tortured by the Blackfeet and reach other trappers/traders of his main group.

I've enjoyed watching the first a few episodes. Good stories, well acted. But I do wonder where the Indians, living in middle of nowhere, with little to no contact with white men, get all those rifles., gun power, musket balls and saddles. Secondly, many of their horses bridles have modern steel bits. One scene had two horses wearing halters which appeared to be made of modern braded nylon. There has been a lot of attention paid to story detail so I was surprised to see these pretty obvious errors.

Good stories. We need more programs like this showing history, not just "shoot em up" Hollywood westerns.

I've only seen one episode, the one in which a Daniel Boone daughter was captured while canoeing. I thought it was excellent.

A mixed review a year ago included: "But I do wonder where the Indians, living in the middle of nowhere, with little or no contact with white men, get all those rifles, gun power, musket balls and saddles."

Uh, well, it's called the Fur Trade. By the early 1800s, the locals had been trading with Europeans for over 300 years. Muskets, rifles, lead, powder, silver ornaments, beads from Italy, vermilion from China, fabric from India, and blankets & Sheffield knives from England. I don't know what bits & saddles are right for Blackfeet & Shoshone, but know that Spanish bits were steel, as far back as Coronado.

All-in-all it was enjoyable, and got most of the main points it was trying to tell. The attention to detail was terrible as others have mentioned (fat Native Americans with saddled horses, Jemimah Boone having her hair combed with something you could buy at Walmart, Kit Carson fixing his fence with a claw hammer bought from Lowes/Home Depot, etc.) I did learn about some things I didn't know, but I was a little disappointed about it missing some things I did know. For example, Daniel Boone's escape from a British-backed Shawnee war party during the American Revolution in order to run 4 marathons in 4 days barefoot while avoiding being tracked so that he could warn Boonsborough of the pending attack wasn't even mentioned. Additionally, there was far more to Jim Bridger than just leaving Hugh Glass behind as a youngster (especially since it's uncertain that it was even him). Episode 2 should have been about Hugh Glass and another episode dedicated to Bridger (Hugh Glass was the real-life man upon whom The Revenant and Man in the Wilderness is based).

Its worth a watch, but it's also worth looking into the rest of the stories.