Alice - nice poster. Congrats by the way, saw your new CD written up in the MT Arts Council newsletter.

I saw only the first night of this series and was both intrigued and dismayed. I thought the producers were pushing for animosity and backbiting, and got it!

In terms of the hunting. My understanding was that it would contravene modern hunting laws, and the nearby modern neighbors might object.

Having been a participant in buckskinner rendezvous, pre-1840 settings, I wondered when the dread spectre of "authenticity" would rear its head. I thought, all things considered, that it was handled pretty well. They were all costumed appropriately, had the correct tools and foods, etc. What they made of it was up to them.

If you really want to complain about realism - there were no video crews with cameras recording humiliating details in 1883! So it's all a state of mind, anyway.

Alice is correct. Bannack and Virginia city were settled some two decades before these familys "arrived" (1861-63)(and Custer got his arrow shirt, 150 miles away in southern Montana, about seven years earlier) - there were pianos, fiddles, banjos and surely guitars here by then.

All in all, I have mixed feelings about what these shows try to convey. I like the history, deplore the histrionics.