The Searchers is a 1956 American epic Western film directed by John Ford and written by Frank S. Nugent, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May.

He has a lot of gold coins of uncertain origin in his possession, and a medal from the Mexican campaign that he gives to his eight-year-old niece, Debbie.

When they find the Comanche camp, Ethan recommends a frontal attack, but Clayton insists on a stealth approach to avoid killing the hostages.

They return home, leaving Ethan to continue his search for the girls with only Lucy's fiancé, Brad Jorgensen, and Debbie's adopted brother, Martin Pawley.

Martin is enthusiastically welcomed by the Jorgensens' daughter Laurie, and Ethan finds a letter waiting for him from a trader named Futterman, who claims to have information about Debbie.

At Futterman's trading post, Ethan and Martin learn that Debbie has been taken by Scar, the chief of the Nawyecka band of Comanches.

After a fistfight between Martin and Charlie, a nervous Yankee soldier, Lieutenant Greenhill, brings news that Ethan's friend Mose Harper has located Scar.

Clayton leads his men to the Comanche camp, this time for a direct attack, but Martin is allowed to sneak in ahead of the assault to find Debbie, who welcomes him.

Author Alan Le May's surviving research notes indicate that the two characters who go in search of a missing girl were inspired by Britton Johnson, an African-American teamster who ransomed his captured wife and children from the Comanches in 1865.

[17] Afterward, Johnson made at least three trips to Indian Territory and Kansas, relentlessly searching for another kidnapped girl, Millie Durgan (or Durkin), until Kiowa raiders killed him in 1871.

[21] James W. Parker, Cynthia Ann's uncle, spent much of his life and fortune in what became an obsessive search for his niece, much like Ethan Edwards in the film.

Parker's story was only one of 64 real-life cases of 19th-century child abductions in Texas that author Alan Le May studied while researching the novel on which the film was based.

In the film, Scar's Comanche group is referred to as the Nawyecka, correctly the Noyʉhka or Nokoni,[22] the same band that kidnapped Cynthia Ann Parker.

Some film critics[specify] have speculated that the historical model for the cavalry attack on a Comanche village, resulting in Look's death and the taking of Comanche prisoners to a military post, was the well-known Battle of Washita River, November 27, 1868, when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's 7th U.S. Cavalry attacked Black Kettle's Cheyenne camp on the Washita River (near present-day Cheyenne, Oklahoma).

[23] The sequence also resembles the 1872 Battle of the North Fork of the Red River, in which the 4th Cavalry captured 124 Comanche women and children and imprisoned them at Fort Concho.

From Frank S. Nugent, whose screenplay from the novel of Alan LeMay is a pungent thing, right on through the cast and technicians, it is the honest achievement of a well-knit team.

"[12] Crowther noted "two faults of minor moment":[12] Variety called it "handsomely mounted and in the tradition of Shane", yet "somewhat disappointing" due to its length and repetitiveness; "The John Ford directorial stamp is unmistakable.

[25] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote, "Though it does not consistently achieve the highest Ford standards, The Searchers is surely the best Western since Shane.

The Ethan Edwards story is stark and lonely, a portrait of obsession, and in it we can see Schrader's inspiration for Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver.

In a 1959 Cahiers du Cinéma essay, Jean-Luc Godard compared the movie's ending to the reuniting of Odysseus with Telemachus in Homer's Odyssey.

The site's critics' consensus reads: "The Searchers is an epic John Wayne Western that introduces dark ambivalence to the genre that remains fashionable today.

[39] Film scholar Ed Lowry writes, "[W]hile the Comanches are depicted as utterly ruthless, Ford ascribes motivations for their actions, and lends them a dignity befitting a proud civilization.

"He is the good American hero driving himself past all known limits and into madness, his commitment to honor and decency burned down to a core of vengeance.

Even one of the film's gentler characters, Vera Miles's Laurie, tells Martin when he explains he must protect his adoptive sister, "Ethan will put a bullet in her brain.

Such a situation would add further layers of nuance to Ethan's obsessive search for Debbie, his revulsion at the thought that she might be living as a Native American, and his ultimate decision to bring her home—and then walk away.

David Lean watched the film repeatedly while preparing for Lawrence of Arabia to help him get a sense of how to shoot a landscape.

[55][56] Scott McGee, writing for Turner Classic Movies, notes "Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, John Milius, Paul Schrader, Wim Wenders, Jean-Luc Godard, and George Lucas have all been influenced and paid some form of homage to The Searchers in their work.

In the film, Anakin Skywalker learns that one of his family members has been abducted by a group of Tusken Raiders (though the character's mother is kidnapped, rather than a niece).

Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan stated that the ending to the show's final episode, "Felina", was influenced by the film.

[66] Kunuk said he watched Western films in the Igloolik community hall as a boy, and declared The Searchers star John Wayne "was our hero".