Revisionist Westerns
The Decline of Westerns in the 80sDirector Sam Fuller's revisionist, low-budget B-film Run of the Arrow (1957), often noted as similar to Costner's Dances With Wolves (1990) many years later, starred Rod Steiger as a disheartened ex-Confederate soldier who journeyed west, endured a torturous 'run of the arrow' challenge, joined a Sioux Indian tribe, and fell in love with an Indian maiden named Yellow Moccasin (Sarita Montiel, with her voice dubbed by Angie Dickinson). John Ford's redemptive last western, Cheyenne Autumn (1964) with Richard Widmark and Carroll Baker, dealt with the destruction of the Native-Americans, by portraying the forced, late 1880s westward exodus of Cheyenne Indians from Oklahoma to their tribal lands in Wyoming.
Dustin Hoffman portrayed Jack Crabb--the sole, white, 121 year-old survivor of Custer's Last Stand and the Battle of Little Big Horn in Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970), a fable about the expansion of the Old West from an adaptation of Thomas Berger's novel. [According to Guinness World Records, the greatest age span portrayed by a movie actor, from 17 to 121, was by 33-year old Hoffman for this role.] Paralleling the Vietnam tragedy, the film demythologized the past and revealed the genocidal atrocities visited upon ethnic Indians by US forces.
12 comments:
Still a great movie with great heart. Dustin Hoffman and Dan George forge a cross-cultural mutual respect and affection I don't remember seeing previously in American Westerns. Yes, a bit cliched by today's standards. But the tale of resilience in the face of decimation is at once heartbreaking but inspiring.
I would not call "Dances with Wolves" and "The Unforgiven" any sort of resurgence in Westerns. Ever since the "The Western" went into quick decline at the end of the 1960s, we've always had Western TV shows and Western movies. However, they are relatively few and far between. If you look at the years "Dances with Wolves" and "The Unforgiven" came out, and the years immediately afterwards, you will find examples of Westerns, but very few.
Why did they decline? Yes, they had been "they had been mined out, done and overdone". However, that does not stop anyone from breathing new life into it with different takes ("Dr Quinn", "Dances with Wolves", or "Deadwood"). Cop shows have been mined out, done, and overdone as well, but they still soldier on. I wonder what other reasons there are for the decline of "The Western".
About the Sioux: They DID exist. I've ready many books about them and have talked to a few. They originated (as far as we know) in eastern Minnesota, not Pennsylvania and Carolina. Some of their traditions have them possibly coming from the northeast earlier, which would have had them migrating from Canada is distant pre-Columbian times. They were a woodland people, closely related to the Winnebago. Due to the changes with the white man coming (including the horse), the western group of Sioux (the Lakota) moved and expanded much further west into what is now known as the states North Dakota and South Dakota, and beyond.
There are still many of the Dakota division of the Sioux still living in Eastern Minnesota (the three main divisions of the Sioux being the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota).
As for the helmet, I found no problem in this movie. As I knew that the Spanish did not themselves molest the Sioux, I took it that the helmet was found/taken by another tribe, and somehow was later traded or otherwise made it north to the Sioux.
Do you have any documentation that the Sioux came from anywhere other than Eastern Minnesota?
I don't have any doubt that the Sioux were relative newcomers to the Black Hills in the historic area. However, their roots in Minnesota are long and deep. You might want to check into the record of Chief Wabasha I, who fought in the side of the British in 1812. This was during Jefferson's time. Wabasha was a Dakota leader whose family, like the rest of his people, had lived in that same area of Eastern Minnesota for generations prior to Jefferson's birth. Their relatives and intermarriages, of which I have seen records of many had to do with Ojibwe and Ho Chunk (Winnebago), not Waccamaw.
I always wondered who the westward expanding Lakota displaced at the Black Hills and other areas. Thanks for revealing this, even if we disagree on the origins of the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota. I'll check more.
Check out:
http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/tribes/siouan/hunkpapahist.htm
for information about the Teton Sioux being found on the banks of the upper Mississippi in 1680.
and also:
http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/tribes/siouan/waccamawhist.htm
which refers to the Waccamaw the remnant was finally being incorporated with the Catawba.
I can probably locate maps that show you the parts in Minnesota that the different Western Sioux / Lakota originated from.
POSTSCRIPTUM: I did not argue against a point by Writerfell about a resurgence of Westerns. I knew he was mentioning something someone else said.
POSTSCRIPTUM SQUAWK:
...but some interpretations are non-factual, while others are factual.
Did more research. The Sioux were first "discovered" in upper Midwest in the century PRIOR to Jefferson's birth (1743), and the French were calling them Sioux during the 1600's. This, being prior to Jefferson and even prior to the Sioux coming to the Black Hills, directly contradicts the assertion that "Natives [forced by Thomas Jefferson] from Pennsylvania and Virginia and North Carolina made their way westward, some finally lodging in the Black Hills, taking up Plains life to survive, and effectively transmogrifying into the Sioux."
Perhaps there were some Siouan people Jefferson much later drove out of the Virginia area and into the upper Midwest, but these people were likely so few in number that they were not noticed in the Sioux Nation already long entrenched there.
I know next to nothing about the Kiowa, but am starting to learn now. My previous research and newer research affirms the woodland Minnesota origins of the Sioux. My newer research (because I had not checked it before) affirms also what you say about the earlier tribes (Kiowa) on the Plains, and that the Sioux were, as you say, latecomers to the Black Hills.
Pointing out the pre-Jeffersonion well documented Minnesota/etc location of the Sioux should not be taken as being like the less documented Hopi-Anasazi connection or magic gypsy mines. Just trying to clear up the implication you gave that the Sioux "DID NOT EXIST" (your words) when they are documented as having been alive and well in the Mille Lacs area in the 17th century and for quite some time before. Some of the Sioux did move onto the Plains, but they were Sioux before this. Moving there did not "transmogrify" them into becoming the Sioux.
I'm not sure why you mentioned "Plains tribes who folllowed the Bison have nothing in their histories about contact with tribes who blocked their passages north and south". This would not pertain to the Sioux of the 17th century and before: they were at the edges of the plains or deep in the woodlands, and would not block passage anyway.
Perhaps you did not realize the existence of the woodland Sioux who pre-dated the Plains Sioux ("Dances with Wolves") and who still survive in places such as the Prairie Island Reservation. Und zo it goes...
Hope you learned more about the Sioux. I did learn more about the Kiowa.
I think you're arguing at cross-purposes here.
I took Russ's comment to mean the Sioux didn't exist as a tribe in that place at that time. Obviously they came from somewhere. They didn't just pop out of the ground. (Or did they...?)
I think the Sioux's immediate prior location before moving onto the Plains was Minnesota. As Wikipedia put it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sioux
"The Santee people migrated north and westward from the south and east into Ohio then to Minnesota."
I'm not sure the archaeological record for the Sioux in Virginia is great. However, the distribution of Siouan languages provides some evidence:
http://www.native-languages.org/famsio.htm
These languages were spoken as far east as the Catawba in South Carolina.
Finally, if the Sioux migrated in the 1600s, they wouldn't have been present when the conquistadors explored the southern Plains in the 1500s. But yes, some tribes could've carried a helmet north over a century or more.
I agree with Russ saying "to mean the Sioux didn't exist as a tribe in that place at that time." I disagree when he explicitly went beyond this to say that the Sioux did not exist prior to moving to the Plains post-Jefferson (read his "transmogrify" line). Even though it is a side issue, it is a significantly inaccurate thing to say about an entire Native nation, and somewhat demeaning to imply that Jefferson created them when in fact the records show them existing long before ol' Tom was born.
(I'm also full aware that many Sioux do not like being called Sioux, since the word means "enemy" and is created by another nation. It's just quicker for me to type it than to type Dakota/Nakota/Lakota all the time).
Regardless, the discussion of the claim by the Kiowa and others to the Black Hills has been enlightening.
Also, Rob, if you have more information about the Santee location prior to Minnesota (other than the sentence in Wikipedia), let us know. I've been looking for such information for quite some time.
I presume there's little archaeological evidence because the prehistoric Sioux existed in small numbers and had few traits that distinguishing them from their neighbors. Therefore, the dissemination of language groups is one of our primary ways of tracing such groups. For instance:
http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/october/Siouan.html
"Linguists think that the Siouan people migrated over a thousand years ago from North Carolina and Virginia to Ohio."
http://dictionary.laborlawtalk.com/Siouan
"While social migrations have yet to be definitively worked out, linguistic and historical sitings indicate a southern origin of Siouan people, with migrations over a thousand years ago from North Carolina and VIrginia to Ohio, then both down the Ohio River to the Mississippi and up to the Missouri, and across Ohio to Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota, home of the Dakota."
If you insist on something other than linguistic analyses, here's a whole paragraph:
http://www.bartleby.com/65/si/Sioux.html
"The Sioux were first noted historically in the Jesuit Relation of 1640, when they were living in what is now Minnesota. Their traditions indicate that they had moved there some time before from the northeast."
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