GOODBYE AND THANKS FOR ALL THE BEANS - WESTERN FUNERALS

John Ford gave us some of the most memorable western funerals - Ford would use his funeral scenes to suggest community. In The Searchers Ford arranges the mourners around the grave, singing his favourite hymn "shall we gather at the river" and places the camera between them, looking into the distance. And at the end of the eulogy John Wayne's Ethan snarls, 'Put an Amen to it.' This as much as any other scene in the movie shows that Ethan is an outsider and can never really be a part of the community. In Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon Nathan Britles (Wayne again) stands besides his wife's grave, talking to the ground. He can't interact with living people but spends hours confiding to his dead wife.

During the early days of western expansion funerals were basic affairs and then only if the deceased was lucky. More often than not the deceased would have a few rocks thrown upon him and one or two words spoken. When the settlers moved West many fine men and women were lost on the trail and huge elaborate funerals would take place in the wilderness.

At one funeral in 1876 an entire wagon train bound for California stopped and more than 200 hundred people stood around a large hole into which the unfortunate deceased was placed. Food and drink were served by the women and the entire wagon-train camped at graveside for the night before moving on, leaving a wonderfully carved wooden cross as a marker.