This text is the companion book to an eight-part documentary series on BBC TV. It is the story of the West and the many people who have tried to claim it. The West streches from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean, from the northern plains to the Rio Grande, a land of infinite horizons and unimaginable distances. For a thousand generations, it belonged only to the Native Americans, who considered it the centre of the universe. By the 16th century, explorers from other countries had begun to make their way to this distant land, but it was the Americans - the last to arrive - who named the vast territory the West and made it a part of their nation.