"The first Indian massacre on 'Into the West' is committed by a herd of stampeding buffalo, not by vigilantes or the United States cavalry.

The first scalping of a frontiersman is the work of a grizzly bear, not of an Indian brave on the warpath.

Nature is the most fearsome enemy - and coveted prize - in TNT's six-part miniseries about Western expansion, which begins tonight. And that is not a bad canvas for an epic that seeks to sidestep cowboy-and-Indian clichs and deliver a richer portrait of Manifest Destiny. The taming of the wilderness is the nation's founding paradox; the pioneers' struggle forged the nation's character but their ethnic cleansing of American Indians indelibly stained it. 'Into the West' tries to weave that dissonance into an otherwise fairly conventional multigenerational family saga."

Get the Story:
An Old West Saga, Told From Both Sides (The New York Times 6/10)
pwnyt

Relevant Links:
Into the West - http://alt.tnt.tv/itw

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'Into the West' mini-series debuts on Friday (6/6)
'Into the West' series to debut next week on TNT (5/31)