McMurtry to malign Comanches again?

'Brokeback' Duo Larry McMurtry And Diana Ossana Script Pair of Period Westerns

By Mike FlemingFirst, they will complete The Color of Lightning, an adaptation the Paulette Jiles book that was published by Harper Collins. Britt Johnson is a freed slave who moves his wife and three children to Texas with dreams of starting a freight business. When he's away, a raiding party of Comanche and Kiowa kill his oldest son and take his family captive. Johnson spends a winter plotting revenge. The story is loosely based on a factual tale said to be an inspiration for the classic Western The Searchers.

The S.C. Gwynne book Empire of the Summer Moon is certainly more sympathetic to the Comanches. The book is a Braveheart-style epic about the great Comanche warrior Quanah, who held the westward expansion of settlers at bay for 40 years, and led to the formation of the Texas Rangers to fight against them.

Published last summer by Scribner, Empire of the Summer Moon focuses on the warrior skills of Quanah, considered the greatest chief the tribe ever had. A big part of the story is the chief's mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, a blue-eyed honey-haired child who was kidnapped by the Comanches when she was 9 and incorporated into the tribe. Her son steeled the Comanches to become ferocious warriors, and the primary impediment to Western expansion.Comment:  White man plots revenge against murderous Indians...yeah, that's really a story that needs to be told. Which must be why Hollywood told it a few dozen times already in the 1940s and 1950s. But there may be a few Americans who don't think Indians are savage killers, so let's tell it again.

McMurtry seems to write a lot about the Comanches. I hope these scripts won't be hatchet jobs like Comanche Moon was. But I suspect something is going on here. Does McMurtry like to make the Comanches look bad so his fellow white men (the Texas Rangers and other anti-Indian interlopers) look good? Is he prejudiced against Indians, as I've suggested before?

For more on McMurtry's writing, see Larry McMurty's Crazy Horse and Indians in Lonesome Dove. For another movie about the devilish Comanches, see Debating Unbound Captives.

Below:  Indians go wild in McMurtry's Comanche Moon.

Larry McMurtry's Crazy Horse

Curiously, Larry McMurtry's short biography of Crazy Horse has an average rating of only three stars on Amazon.com. That's not very good for a major author like him.

I haven't read the book, but I wonder if it reinforces my claim that McMurtry was biased against Indians in Lonesome Dove and Comanche Moon. There are hints that it does.

Crazy Horse: A Life (Penguin Lives Biographies)brief encounter, February 13, 2003
By Randy Keehn (Williston, ND United States)

[T]his book goes in some strange directions dealing with this paucity of information. For example, in trying to describe the great gathering of Indians at the Ft. Laramie Council of 1851, McMurtry inexplicably quotes Wilfred Thesiger's account of an Ethiopian gathering of African tribesmen. Shortly thereafter, he describes the tribal warfare of the Sioux by quoting Peter Matthiessen's description of tribal warfare in New Guinea in the early 1960's. Well, the primary resources on Native Americans may be limited but not so much that we must wander to other continents for our facts.

McMurtry unqualified, March 9, 1999
By A Customer

What are McMurtry's qualifications to write about Crazy Horse, one wonders? Does he know the Lakota people? Has he lived among them? Has he heard their oral traditions? Does he have the vaguest idea of what Crazy Horse means to Crazy Horse's people? In general, James Atlas, editor of the Penguin series of short biographies, is on the right track in not seeking academic scholars and similar authorities to write these books, but SOME expertise, one would think, would not be amiss, especially in dealing with a figure so lost in myth as this compelling Oglala. The best book on Crazy Horse is STONE SONG by Win Blevins. It is a novel. McMurtry also writes novels and needs to stick to the form.

A waste of time, September 13, 2000
By A Customer

This book was absolutely pathetic. For anyone seeking any understanding of Crazy Horse, Lakota culture, the history of the American West, look elsewhere. I find it hard to believe that anyone would publish such a flimsy and insubstantial piece of writing. This book contributes absolutely nothing to our understanding of Native Americans or of our history. What an insult to the intelligence of any reader.Larry McMurtry

"Crazy Horse"The author takes the known facts about the period, as well as material garnered from documented interviews with Native Americans and whites who knew Crazy Horse and creates a vivid portrait of the warrior, the human being who cared first and foremost for his people--for the very young, the sick and elderly--the man of such moral authority that he sparked deadly jealousy amongst some of his own men. "Among a broken people an unbroken man can only rarely be tolerated." Crazy Horse "became a too-painful reminder of what the people as a whole had once been."Comment:  The quotes in the second article are what inspired me to post this. The Lakota were a "broken people"?! Would they agree with that characterization? Somehow I doubt it.

These quotes suggest McMurtry's Eurocentric bias. Indians used to be brave, noble savages in some distant, romantic past. But by the time the Americans confronted them, they were broken, pitiful remnants of their former glorious selves. They were on their way to dying out despite the efforts of a few valiant exceptions such as Crazy Horse.

Crazy Horse and Winnetou

This is exactly the attitude Europeans take about their beloved Winnetou in Karl May's Old Shatterhand books. Namely, that Winnetou was a brave, noble savage among the corrupt and degraded bands of skulking Indians. One European has even argued that these portraits of a noble savage means the books were pro-Indian.

Wrong, I told him. Look at the corrupt and degraded bands of skulking Indians, not at the single noble savage. These "broken" Indians are the norm in May's (and McMurtry's) books. They determine whether the author was pro- or anti-Indian.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Books.

Indians in Lonesome Dove

In June 2008 I watched Lonesome Dove, supposedly one of the great Westerns of all time. Unfortunately, the treatment of Indians in this 1989 mini-series is hugely problematical.

Here's a synopsis of the story:Retired Texas Rangers Gus McRae and Woodrow Call are content to live out their remaining years in the tiny Texas town of Lonesome Dove. Then their old friend Jake comes to town, and tells them about the incredible oppurtunities for cattle ranching in Montana. Encouraged by this, Call convinces Gus and many other townspeople to go on a perilous cattle drive to Montana. Gus has another agenda though: his former sweetheart now lives in Nebraska, and he hopes for a second chance with her. As the drive goes on it takes on an epic scale, ultimately becoming what could well be called the central event in the lives of all involved.How bad is Lonesome Dove in terms of Indians? Let's take a look:

By my count, eight of the 12 named characters who die are killed by Indians. (Three others are hanged and one is bitten by a snake.)

The murderous Blue Duck and his gang of Indians are pure evil. The fact that they're "renegades" is irrelevant since they're the only Indians given significant time.

Blue Duck is played by Frederic Forrest, who doesn't look remotely like an Indian--not even a "half-breed."

The only Indians not presented as killers and rapists are a starving band of stragglers. But even one of them kills when confronted by a stranger.

About the only positive mention of Indians comes when Gus says the West is less interesting without them.

When Call and Gus drive their cattle from Texas to Montana, they probably cross several Indian reservations and violate several Indian treaties. But these considerations aren't even mentioned. In Lonesome Dove, Indians are like criminals lurking in alleyways: outcasts from civilized society with no beliefs or rights of their own.

Incredibly, when Call finds a place in Montana he likes, he simply declares it his. The story takes place at the peak of the Indian Wars, around the time of Little Bighorn, so everyone should've been aware of tribal treaty rights. But again, there's no mention of the land belonging to anyone--not the federal government, other settlers, or Indians.

Lonesome Dove's Manifest Destiny

According to Lonesome Dove, America's land was free for the taking. Anyone who was brave, strong, and true enough could simply take it. This is the dark, ugly side of American history encapsulated in one story.

Lonesome Dove is one of the most myopic examples of American myth-making in the last half century. Its pro-cowboy, anti-Indian philosophy would've fit nicely in the worst Westerns of the 1940s and 1950s. Yet Larry McMurtry published Lonesome Dove in 1985 and the mini-series appeared in 1989. If there's a valid excuse for his paean to Manifest Destiny, I don't know what it is.

I haven't read McMurtry's books, but I've seen the Comanche Moon and Lonesome Dove mini-series. Judging by them, McMurtry is badly prejudiced against Indians. I suspect he loved Westerns when he was young and John Wayne's Red River was one of his favorites.

Other than its negative take on Indians, Lonesome Dove isn't bad. Though the people who consider it the best Western ever have grossly overrated it, it's worth watching. Rob's rating: 7.5 of 10.

For more on the subject, see Indians Owned the United States and TV Shows Featuring Indians.