Admittedly, these movies are great entertainment. Rarely do they even attempt to show us what life was really like during that period of history.
Movies are often cold and impersonal - usually playing only on the eye catching and sensational.
So it is with our impressions of the average enlisted soldier of the United States Army during the years of this nation's westward expansion. The men who joined the Army in the 1870s came from a wide diversity of backgrounds. In 1873 our country was plunged into a financial crisis as devastating as the Great Depression of the 1930s. Jobs were few and hard to find. The U.S. Army was the only social institution of the day that provided men who couldn't make a living any other way, a chance to make a living.