system
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human
ELI5: why does John Wayne refer to people as "pilgrims" in his films?

Is he referencing the Pilgrims of the 1600s or are there specific Wild West ones?
gpt
Not the kind we think about this week, with the turkeys and the buckles on their hats. Pilgrim just means a person on pilgrimage -- a religious voyage of fulfillment and redemption. More generally, it means a wandering traveler from a distant place, or just a foreigner.

Wayne (and other characters in Westerns) uses the word "Pilgrim" to refer to easterners recently arrived in the Old West, especially when they're soft, timid, and moralizing -- values associated with religion, rather than the bitter realities of violent frontier life.