CBR News had the fortune of witnessing such a battle during a set visit last December to the 20th Century Fox film "Pathfinder." Directed by Marcus Nispel (helmer of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake), the film is a remake of a 1987 Norwegian film called "Ofelas." It tells the story of a Viking expedition to North America that ends in tragedy. The only survivor of the trip is a little boy that a local Indian tribe takes in and raises as their own. When the boy grows older, another group of Vikings arrives and plans on raiding the villages. It's then up to the young man to protect the Indian tribe and save his adopted family. Karl Urban ("The Bourne Supremacy") plays the young man, and is joined by a cast that includes Clancy Brown, Ralf Moeller, Russell Means, and Moon Bloodgood.
4 comments:
Just wanted to give you a heads up that the release date for Pathfinder has been pushed back until January 12, not September as the article indicates.
Writerfella here --
There was a very much similar story told as a part of Hallmark Entertainment's DREAMKEEPER. It was the segment in Part Two called "The Legend Of The Red-Headed Kiowa." Alice Marriott collected the story in her books about the Kiowas back in the 1950s, and someone decided to make it into a film script segment of a two-part miniseries.
Well, as it turns out, that 'Red-Headed Kiowa' was my great-great-great grandfather,' and his story is a part of my family history. Comanches raided a wagon train down in what is now Texas and as is usual, they kept the girl children survivors but sent the boy survivors out with individual Comanche braves to be killed. That boy, Irish-German, was wise enough to know that the man who carried him on his horse was going to kill him. And when the brave stopped and prepared to swing the boy by his ankles to hit his head against a rock or a tree, the boy knew to fight and kick and scream and scratch and hit the man until the Comanche was bloodied and amazed. "You have too much spirit to die," the Comanche said, and so he took the child as his own and returned to the raiding party. When the story was told, the rest of the Comanches agreed, that the boy had 'too much spirit.'
Comanches and Kiowas never had been able to defeat each other historically, so they agreed that they should meet every spring for a tournament of games and trading that represented their treaty between the two tribes. Nothing was exempted from this tournament and so, when the Kiowas met with the Comanches the following spring, they asked after the white boy child in their midst. Hearing the story, the Kiowas then decided to include that child in their trading bids. The Comanche man did not want to give up the child but treaty law was treaty law. The Kiowas bought the child for a quarter bottle of whiskey, a rifle without a firing pin, four swayback horses, and several moth-eaten blankets. The boy stayed with the Kiowas and grew up among them, becoming more of a Kiowa than the Kiowas themselves. When the Kiowa were defeated around 1870 and taken to Ft. Sill in Oklahoma Territory, the Army repatriated the various captives, almost all female, to families or whatever church was willing to take them. But the white boy, then 14, refused to be repatriated. A soldier was found who spoke German and the two conversed, in baby-talk German. The boy said, "I am not white, I am Kiowa, and I want to stay with my people."
When he could not be dissuaded, they finally allowed him to stay with 'his people.' And he grew to an adult in the Kiowa tribe and married. When the reservation was broken up by the Dawes Act in 1897, he received a 160-acre parcel of that land for himself, and his name and his land still exist within my family at this time. His Kiowa name was Khol-Ah-Khoy, 'wrinkle-neck,' because when a white man turns his head, the neck skin wrinkles.
Thus, any story that depicts other-than-Native members of any particular tribe may be faithful to a principle that I know to be more than true. 1/16th of his blood comes to me, and each generation has produced at least three red-headed children to show that he very much still is alive within us all.
This demonstrates that each of us is the product of our environment and our heritage, but that also we can pick and choose which environment and which heritage we wish to embody...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
I found Scott Grimes, who played Tehan the redheaded Kiowa, to be one of the least convincing actors in the series. If you ask me, he has too much of a modern sensibility to play a 19th century youth. But he's good as Morris, the obnoxious ER doctor.
Anyway, thanks for the inside scoop on
Dreamkeeper.
Hey what was Khol-Ah-Khoy's real last name. I think that I am related to you.
Post a Comment