S1, E1: This series chronicles the saga of the American West, tracing the lives of a diverse cast of characters, from explorers, soldiers and Indian warriors to settlers, railroad builders and gaudy showmen, who share their stories in their own words, through diaries, letters and autobiographical accounts. The West has always been a land of myth. Across two million square miles of the most spectacular landscape on earth, the original Native American inhabitants linked their creation stories to majestic mountains, pristine rivers, searing deserts and silent forests. This had been their home, as the Kiowa said, since the time long ago "when dogs could talk." To the Europeans, the West was a "wilderness" to be conquered -- filled with boundless treasure, souls to save and new territories to explore. Cabeza de Vaca, the first white man to wander the West, was surprised to discover friendship among the Indians; yet the conquistador Coronado saw them only as enemies as he swept through their villages searching in vain for the Seven Cities of Gold. And nearly 100 years before the American Revolution, the Pueblo people of the Southwest rose up against their European masters and drove the Spanish from their lands. With America's purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1804, Lewis and Clark set off to find the fabled Northwest Passage -- as a confident young nation prepared for its own epic march across the West.