I like how the Searchers handled it. You didn't quite know what Ethan would do after years of looking for Debbie and finally discovering she'd been made an Indian chief's bride. The story gave just as many reasons for him to continue hating the Indians as for him to let go of his hate. The book ended quite differently as was perhaps foreshadowed when Ethan sees the three young girls who had been kidnapped by Indians, now out of their minds, and completely disgusted, dismisses their whiteness labeling them as Comanche now. At the end of the novel he tries to strangle Debbie. But the film has Ethan pick her up and hold her as he did when she was a girl. The message (given that he loved her mother) is love can conquer hate but it's your choice to love or hate and cannot be dictated by circumstances.
