There’s a common misconception about 1883’s Dutton family, and Elsa Dutton (Isabel May) proves that it’s not true. Elsa is the eldest child of James (Tim McGraw) and Margaret Dutton (Faith Hill), who traveled on the Oregon Trail from Texas to Montana. 1883‘s characters, including Elsa’s five-year-old brother, John (Audie Rick), hailed from Tennessee, where Elsa’s father was a farmer after fighting in the Civil War. James meets his family in Fort Worth, where the family joins a wagon train of emigrants led by Shea Brennan (Sam Elliott) and Thomas (LaMonica Garrett).

With more traditional Western elements, 1883‘s ten episodes anchor the Yellowstone franchise, explaining how John Dutton’s (Kevin Costner) ancestors settled in Paradise Valley. After Elsa is sH๏τ with a poisonous arrow by a Lakota warrior, she has only a few days to live, and James vows to settle wherever his daughter lies to rest. Elsa Dutton’s death in 1883 is the catalyst for the family’s legacy of land preservation and ownership in Montana, where they raise cattle for almost 150 years. Still, why James’ family made their 1883 journey is often mischaracterized, according to Elsa herself in the premiere.

Elsa Dutton Proves John Dutton’s Family Wasn’t Poor In 1883

Elsa Says 1883’s Dutton Family Wasn’t Poor In The Premiere

Elsa Dutton’s family in 1883 is often described as “impoverished.” Their journey is called “an escape to flee poverty.” However, these descriptions are gross mischaracterizations, according to Elsa Dutton. In 1883 episode 1, Elsa talks about the motivation for her father’s journey in the finale scene of the premiere. Elsa says that her family wasn’t poor, and they weren’t desperate, proving that the commonly held belief that James Dutton and his family were poor is a popular misconception. In the last line of Elsa Dutton’s narration in 1883 episode 1, she says this:

“We weren’t poor. We weren’t desperate. The road west is filled with failures… but failure isn’t what drove him. It was a dream. And the dream is coming true…”

From the beginning of 1883, Elsa tells us that the pioneering Dutton family’s journey was driven by their father’s vision of their future, not poverty or desperation. This revelation is in harmony with how the earliest members of the Dutton family tree talk about their journey. Margaret Dutton is relentless in her support of her husband’s dream, even when James Dutton doesn’t have a destination or a plan to get there, and the journey becomes harder than he said it would be.

There are other hints that James Dutton’s family isn’t struggling with money on their westward journey to Oregon, although they are persevering through plenty of other challenges. Elsa wears a gold charm bracelet in 1883, which she uses to barter for other goods. The bracelet has gold nuggets for charms, and Elsa remarks that her father hid some of his money on her when she trades with it. With the gold nuggets, Elsa can swap for virtually anything, proving the family was better off than perceived in Yellowstone‘s earlier timeline.

How Elsa Dutton’s Narration Changes Yellowstone’s Story

Elsa Dutton’s Explanation For 1883 Makes More Sense

What Elsa tells us in 1883 is that James Dutton’s establishment of the Yellowstone Ranch wasn’t about money. It was, however, about a dream and building a legacy. That’s in harmony with the rest of the Dutton family members in Yellowstone and 1923. While the Dutton family certainly needed money to survive, it wasn’t what drove any of them. In 1923, Jacob Dutton (Harrison Ford) was happy with the livelihood he had, content with preserving their way of life and the natural land rather than trying to monetize the valley like Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton).

While Jacob Dutton, James’ brother, took Elsa’s father’s dream and “made it an empire,” as she says in 1923, the Dutton family’s operation is not so large that they are wealthy, or even bringing in more money than they need to survive. In Yellowstone, we know that John Dutton III wasn’t focused on capitalizing on his land. Like those before him, John Dutton wanted to preserve a simpler way of life. This was especially hard for John, who existed in a modern world that had moved on from ranching. Therefore, John, too, is driven by dreams, as were his ancestors.

How Elsa Dutton’s Revelation Justifies Yellowstone Season 5’s Ending

The Dutton Family Didn’t Need To Engage In Westward Expansion

Ultimately, John’s disinterest in monetizing the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch was short-sighted. After John Dutton’s death in Yellowstone season 5, his children, Kayce (Luke Grimes) and Beth (Kelly Reilly), struggle to pay the mᴀssive tax that came with inheriting the ranch from their father. While Beth was business-savvy, having studied finance in college, John didn’t heed his daughter’s warnings when the father and daughter still had time to enact her business plans to sell and package their meat.

Instead of struggling to maintain his family’s land preservation legacy after John Dutton’s death, Kayce offers to sell the Yellowstone Ranch to the Broken Rock Tribe. When Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) accepts, Kayce restores the Dutton family’s stewardship of the largest contiguous ranch in the United States to the Native American community. Considering the 1883 Dutton family wasn’t acting for survival, and that a dream drove James Dutton’s original purpose of settling in the West, it changes the end of Yellowstone’s story.

Since Elsa suggests their journey wasn’t necessary, the 1883 Duttons could have stayed in Tennessee. Instead, Elsa’s family participated in westward expansion, engaging in the settler colonialism that disrupted Native American communities and ravaged their ecosystems and ways of living. 1883 represents this when Elsa gets sH๏τ with an arrow over a misunderstanding, or in James Dutton’s encounter with Spotted Eagle (Graham Greene), which establishes Yellowstone’s prophecy in 1883. Therefore, John Dutton’s family had all the more reason to step back from their legacy and relinquish the land to its Indigenous stewards.