[3] It was directed by and starred Clint Eastwood (as Josey Wales), with Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Bill McKinney, and John Vernon.

[4][5] During the Civil War, Josey Wales is a Missouri farmer turned soldier, who seeks to avenge the death of his family and gains a reputation as a feared gunfighter.

The film was adapted by Sonia Chernus and Philip Kaufman from author Asa Earl "Forrest" Carter's 1972 novel The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales (republished, as shown in the movie's opening credits, as Gone to Texas).

During the American Civil War, the wife and son of Missouri farmer Josey Wales are murdered by pro-Union paramilitaries led by the brutal Captain Terrill.

After burying their corpses, Wales seeks vengeance for his family by joining a group of Confederate bushwhackers under the command of William T. Anderson, attacking the Union Army and pro-Union sympathizers.

After the war ends in 1865, Wales' superior, Captain Fletcher, persuades his men to surrender, having been promised amnesty by Union General Jim Lane.

He meets elderly Cherokee man Lone Watie on the way, who informs Wales that Confederate General Joseph O. Shelby is fleeing to Mexico and suggests they do likewise.

The Outlaw Josey Wales was inspired by a 1972 novel by supposedly Cherokee writer Forrest Carter, alias of former KKK leader and segregationist speech writer of George Wallace, Asa Earl Carter, an identity that was exposed in part due to the success of the film,[8] and was originally titled The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales and later retitled Gone to Texas.

Kaufman wanted the film to stay as close to the novel as possible in style and retained many of the mannerisms in Wales's character that Eastwood would display on screen, such as his distinctive diction with words like "reckon", "hoss" (instead of "horse"), and "ye" (instead of "you"), and spitting tobacco juice on animals and victims.

[5] Kaufman cast Chief Dan George, who had been nominated for an Academy Award for Supporting Actor in Little Big Man, as the old Cherokee Lone Watie.

Sondra Locke, also a previous Academy Award nominee, was cast by Eastwood against Kaufman's wishes[11] as Laura Lee, the granddaughter of the old settler woman; at 32, she was a decade older than the character.

Upon release in August 1976, The Outlaw Josey Wales was widely acclaimed by critics, many of whom saw Eastwood's role as an iconic one, relating it with much of America's ancestral past and the destiny of the nation after the American Civil War.

[20] The film was pre-screened at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and Humanities in Idaho in a six-day conference entitled Western Movies: Myths and Images.

[21] Roger Ebert compared the nature and vulnerability of Eastwood's portrayal of Josey Wales with his "Man with No Name" character in the Dollars Trilogy and praised the atmosphere of the film.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Recreating the essence of his iconic Man With No Name in a post-Civil War Western, director Clint Eastwood delivered the first of his great revisionist works of the genre.