The Great Indian Wars 1840-1890

This recitation of the ongoing battle between the US Army and the various hostile Native American Tribes in the 19th Century is a decent overview of the period. It covers the campaigns of Sitting Bull, Cochece, Geronimo and many others. The real drawback of the film is it's reliance on a very limited number of period stills mixed with cheap public domain fiction film footage. The overall effect is tedious. Additionally, the film is straight narrative without any "expert" interviews or opinions to add color.

A good introduction to the period, but not one you'll watch over and over like a good documentary serial such as Ken Burns' Civil War or the World At War.

The reality is, Ken Burns and his magnificence have spoiled us when it comes to broad, sweeping documentaries on topics as wide ranging and diverse as "the Great Indian Wars". Burns is in a league of his own, and it is unfair to everyone else who attempts to do documentaries on any subject that he is so good and so well known. After all, everything pales in comparison. His western documentary is, of course, greatly superior to this collection, but the advantage this collection has is that it is focused almost exclusively on the tragic history of the native American, US Military conflicts. Sure, it is dry. It would have benefited from some music other than Indian drumming. It is a good primer though on the conflicts that comprised a 50-60 year period of American history and it wets the thirst for those who so desire to, study in more depth the subject at hand. All in all, a very good documentary set for a low price.

• on the contrary; this is the most objective description of the Indian wars I have seen so far. It is wonderfully free of the usual tipi-hippie lamentations over the loss of the Indian culture that must be wiser and better simply because it fell victim to the cruel, white man. Also, it does not claim the oft-repeated 'brotherhood' of the red man 'who did not believe in owning the land' and such claptrap, quite the contrary: it blatantly dares to state the FACT that native Americans had been fighting each other for thousands of years before the white man came along and beat them at their own game. How refreshing the truth can be when it is a scarce commodity in documentaries.

The only thing I'll say against this production is that it should have been backed with more funds. It is deploringly low-budget, the visual sides are tacky and boring and the narrator has a tendency to bore the viewer to pieces with his slow, droning and overly correct pronunciation.

I am an American Indian. I am responsible through ceremonies and the words coming out of my mouth to speak truthfully to my relations. While this film has some useful historical observations, it is in essence a paranoid work of propaganda that takes everybody back rather than forward. The film entirely ignores the struggles in the east and southwest, the west coast and the indigenous tribes (Hopi) of the southwest. it leaves out many things. It substitutes an unrelenting narrative to point the finger at all the bad Indians who stood in the way of the United States government. Custer is praised. The Indians were all so very cruel to their captives..... It parades the Indians out as freaks and monsters who deserve all the trouble they get in life. This film is horribly inaccurate and misleading. There is not a single voice of any American Indian dead or alive. the thinking behind this film is very dark, manipulative and incorrect in my view. I have spent more than forty years of my life monitoring, studying and asking questions about the words and images which pass for information about the American Indian. This film series is so retro, it is so unbearably white, which is not a compliment. This film is incorrect in more ways than I have the heart and words to say. In good faith I do say that as an American Indian, and a United States Army Veteran, that this film has a dark agenda. I am deeply sad that it has been made and is being distributed as something factual and historical. I encourage those of you who may know American Indian people to share this film with them and watch their reaction. When will we ever get together and know the real and actual, set us all free truth about these issues?

Although trying to appear as a retelling of facts from the period of hostilities between the Native Americans and European settlers this low budget ill conceived documentary remains part of the propaganda which defiles the very core of the issue: persecution and racial extermination. The narrator retells in a fable like context of military operations when the precise phrase is genocide. All the viewers be advised that graphical content and footage from early western movies is used to achieve the brainwash effect and restore the crooked image with which Hollywood depicted the struggle for survival of Native Americans. In this day and age when every hidden truth is being uncovered this production tries to muddle the past again by mixing historical facts with propagandist fiction.