Any change since Dances with Wolves?

Indians in Aspic

By Michael Dorris

Published: February 24, 1991When I saw "Dances With Wolves" at an advance screening, I predicted that it would be less than a box-office smash. Though spectacular to look it, it struck me as too long, too predictable, too didactic to attract a large audience. Twelve Academy Award nominations and $100 million in revenue later, was I ever wrong. In fact, the movie probably sells tickets precisely because it delivers the old-fashioned Indians that the ticket-buying audience expects to find. Dunbar is our national myth's everyman--handsome, sensitive, flexible, right-thinking. He passes the test of the frontier, out-Indians the Indians, achieves a pure soul by encountering and surmounting the wilderness.

Yet, if "Dances With Wolves" had been about people who happen to be Indians, rather than about Indians (uniformly stoic, brave, nasty to their enemies, nice to their friends), it might have stood a better chance of acting as a bridge between societies that have for too long woodenly characterized each other.

With such tremendous popularity, the film is sure to generate a bubble of sympathy for the Sioux, but hard questions remain: Will this sentiment be practical, translating into public support for native American religious freedom cases before the Supreme Court, for restoration of Lakota sacred lands (the Black Hills) or water rights, for tribal sovereignty, for providing the money desperately needed by reservation health clinics? Pine Ridge is the most economically impoverished corner of America today, the Census Bureau says, but will its modern Indian advocates in business suits, men and women with laptop computers and perfect English, be the recipients of a tidal wave of good will?

Or will it turn out, once again, that the only good Indians--the only Indians whose causes and needs we can embrace--are lodged safely in the past, wrapped neatly in the blankets of history, magnets for our sympathy because they require nothing of us but tears in a dark theater?Comment:  The answers to Dorris's 1991 questions are no and no. There was no tidal wave of good will toward Indians.

I'd like to think Dances With Wolves advanced the cause by increasing awareness of Indians. If not a tidal wave, it may have generated a steady stream of good will. It may have made everything from Hollywood movies and TV shows to Native American Heritage Month to the National Museum of the American Indian more possible.

But several factors washed out that good will in the last two decades. Among them were the public backlash against Indian casinos, Bush's uncompassionate conservatism against minorities, and 9/11, which made it more acceptable to denigrate brown-skinned people. I'm not sure people think any more favorably of Indians than they did in 1991.

If anything has advanced Indians, it's probably the economic and political clout that came with gaming revenues. Tribes with successful casinos are doing notably better than they were 20 years ago. "Money talks" in America; we respect people with cash.

For more on the subject, see Movies Convey America's "Master Narrative," Valenti:  Movies Are Merely Movies, and Ups and Downs of Hollywood Indians.

The Aracoma Story

The Aracoma Story:  Historical drama rehearsals already underwayRehearsals are now underway for The Aracoma Story—Spirits & Legends summer production that will begin showing soon.

A cast of about 70 local residents from all across southern West Virginia are spending the next several weeks under the guidance of director Bill France, a press release from The Aracoma Story Inc., said.What's the story about?

The Aracoma StoryLogan County, West Virginia, lays claim to one of America's most romantic legends, the story of Princess Aracoma. The story grew in Logan County around the authentic details of an incident in the history of the region more than 200 years ago.

The story asserts that Princess Aracoma and Boling Baker moved into this valley sometime close to the year 1760 and lived in peace on the island (today's City of Logan) until 1780.

"The Aracoma Story" blends tales of the Shawnee Indians with the story of young love. Boling Baker, a scout from General Braddock's Army, is captured by the Shawnee who are led by Chief Cornstalk. He is rescued from death by Cornstalk's daughter, Aracoma, and adopted into the tribe that moved to the island in the Guyandotte Valley. The drama tells how Baker and Aracoma's people were weakened by disease and how a raid, led by Baker to steal horses, ended in the destruction of this adoptive tribe.Comment:  How many times have people told variations of the Pocahontas legend? I don't know, but with a couple centuries of "historical" legends, plays, novels, movies, comic books, and so forth, it seems like dozens.

I hope we're not supposed to believe any of these stories. Forget the obvious fact that few if any tribes had royalty such as "princesses." How is it that every legend involves a beautiful young chief's daughter saving a handsome young white man? What about all the times when the chief's grandmother or uncle or brother-in-law saved someone? What about all the times the person saved was a little girl, an old man, or a runaway slave? Did the Indians forget to record these legends?

Is Aracoma's story helpful?

I suspect the producers think they're helping Indians by telling this probably phony tale. But have they thought about the message they're sending? I'm guessing not.

Let's recap how the legend goes: Savage Indians capture civilized white man who's minding his own business. Indians look like monsters because they're willing to kill an "innocent." Only the intervention of a princess (more noble and honorable than the cutthroats around her) saves the princely white man.

And how does the story end? Judging by the summary, Baker's horse raid led to a deadly reprisal by settlers. So the virtuous white men simply overreacted to a nasty Indian attack. They weren't out to dispossess the Indians by hook or crook. They were minding their own business when the villainous Indians stole their property. Then they had to fight back.

In short, the Indians brought their misfortune on themselves. If they had just lived in peace like their white neighbors, they'd still dominate West Virginia. But they got greedy and suffered for it.

Life in Aracoma's land

I'm not sure if Aracoma and her people died in 1780. But Tecumseh, the famed Shawnee freedom fighter, was born in 1768 in nearby Ohio. He and the semi-historical Aracoma were contemporaries.

We don't know much about Aracoma's life, but here's what Tecumseh's early life was like:At least five times between 1774 and 1782, Tecumseh's village was attacked by colonials and later American armies as the Shawnee allied with the British during the American Revolutionary War. Following his father's death, his family moved back to Chief Blackfish's nearby village of Chillicothe. The town was destroyed in 1779 by Kentucky militia in reprisal for Blackfish's attack on Boonesburough. His family fled, and moved to another nearby Kispoko village, but their new home was destroyed the following year by forces under the command of George Rogers Clark. The family moved a third time to the village of Sanding Stone. That village was attacked by Clark in November of 1782, causing them to move again to a new settlement near modern Bellefontaine, Ohio.

Violence continued unabated on the American frontier after the American Revolution as the Northwest Indian War. A large tribal confederacy, known as the Wabash Confederacy that included all the major tribes of the Ohio and Illinois country, joined together to repel the American settlers from the region. As the war between the confederacy and the Americans grew, Tecumseh became a warrior and took an active part fighting along with his older brother Cheeseekua beginning at age fifteen. Tecumseh participated in several battles, including the 1794 Fallen Timbers, which ended the war in favor of the American settlers.Did any of this make it into The Aracoma Story? I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess no.

What Aracoma tells us

The message of the Pocahontas Aracoma legend is this: White men came in peace. Savages who didn't understand the concept tried to kill them. The noble white man joined the Indians and tried to help them. And a few noble Indians tried to help the white man because his way was true.

Despite all this effort to save the savages from oblivion, they were doomed to fade away. Why? Because of diseases, misunderstandings, and a few overzealous white settlers. Federal and state policies, not to mention a culture of greed and entitlement, had nothing to do with it. It was an accident of fate that destroyed the Indians, not an avaricious Euro-American philosophy of conquest and genocide.

In short, the good whites and good Indians tried to save the bad Indians from the bad whites, but failed. The important thing to remember is they tried. Good Christian Euro-Americans did and do the right thing when given half a chance. Any failure on their part isn't their fault.

For more on the subject, see Pocahontas Bastardizes Real People and Tonto and the "Good Indian."

Below:  Non-Indian Laura Hatfield plays Princess Aracoma, further cementing the idea that Aracoma was as noble and pure as a white woman.