Popular entertainment reacts to history

Humor directed at ethnicity is obviously touchy, far more touchy than in past times. George Carlin when he was in his pre-counterculture iteration had his "Indian sergeant" routine. Built him up quite a bit. 

Our culture evolves, always striving for enlightenment and fairness. Like any good idea it can be errant sometimes. But we try. Does the University of Minnesota really need to expand "American Indian Studies?" Our Morris MN allegedly has a checkered past with Natives.

 

Flynn, his era in Hollywood

I can remember popular movies consistent with Indians being "the other." Many of us watched "They Died With their Boots On" starring the Golden Age of Hollywood actor Errol Flynn. My generation would not have watched the movie when it was current. But of course we watched it on the magical TV screen. "Oldies but Goodies." We became well-versed on so many cinema classics like "War of the worlds," "The Time Machine" and "The Land That Time Forgot." 

Let's not overlook "The Day the Earth Stood Still" with the robot that looked as though it was made out of tin cans. The special effects were just good enough. I would suggest that if the story is gripping and imaginative, audiences can overlook a lot. I also think black and white glossed over some shortcomings. "They Died With their Boots On" was black and white. And of course the movie was about Custer and his meeting with fate out West. 

The battle is said to be one of the most analyzed military engagements ever. And certainly that says something for the Natives as they must have had a well-grounded approach. Although, not in the way that comedian Carlin would have us imagine. 

It has been said of the Indians out there in Montana that they had "the best light cavalry in the world." They certainly had guns and don't ever underestimate that. They employed bow and arrow effectively too. It has been suggested that our history sense has blown that battle out of proportion. And it got that way, certain critics point out, because Custer's widow worked so hard to keep her husband's profile high after the event. 

We can overlook factors like this. Ever hear of Elon Farnsworth? Probably not. He might have gone on to be president of the U.S. He was killed in an ill-advised cavalry charge at the battle of Gettysburg. Nobody propped him up posthumously. George Pickett by contrast became a household name, and that's for the same reason as Custer: his wife built up his stature. And did you know that "Pickett's Charge" should actually have been called "Longstreet's Charge?" 

The Civil War had a racial angle because of the South wanting to keep slavery alive. The Battle of the little Bighorn: a racial angle there too, the enforcement of Manifest Destiny and dealing with the indigenous people who did not have the Europeans' concept of property. 

The free-roaming Natives have of course been romanticized through time. Our popular history shows the Natives as being so uniquely sensitive to the natural world. We conjure up dream-like images of it all. They wanted freedom! Well of course they did - it's really an impulse within all of us - but the European-based culture moved forward with an inevitability and with standards that had people healthier and safer. It has been said that surviving a Comanche raid was a fate worse than death. I think y'all can fill in the blanks with that - I shall not elaborate. 

 

Errol Flynn

Music with inference

It is interesting to view the "final battle" scene from "They Died With Their Boots On." Interesting in how it portrays the two cultures relative to each other. Flynn plays a totally dashing Custer, the one out front as his soldiers charged on horseback! He extends his sword out in front of him! 

And the music! My God this speaks absolute volumes. The music accompanying the scenes of cavalry is clearly heroic-sounding. As soon as the camera shifts to the Natives - also on horses - my the music shifts. The atmosphere becomes mysterious and foreboding. How to suppress these uncooperative denizens of the far West plains? These "savages?" Terms like that indeed floated around. 

Flynn and his troops become surrounded and then it's a slow story of slaughter with the cavalry guys at least fighting valiantly. No way can we assume it happened that way, any more than we can assume that Davy Crockett fought heroically right to the last, as told to us by myth-weaver Walt Disney. 

 

Eyes got opened

My own generation of the boomers did develop some suspicion around all such storytelling, I believe. TV was hard to contain. We got little nuggets of truth all the time like about the very dark Vietnam war. Propaganda was not going to work as it did in World War II. So by the '70s, my generation had clearly turned the corner on the myth-making. We had become politically liberal, felt that was the most honest camp to be in. Then we had to start questioning some of that too, but I will not digress. 

"Woodstock" was this massive multi-cultural celebration. Native Americans were no longer "the other" in our eyes. 

Whereas the Flynn movie did not show Indians as human beings with depth at all - and I mean not at all - by the end of the 20th Century we had quite different portrayals. The movie "Son of the Morning Star" came along about Custer. It most surely presented the Natives as real people with depth, worthy of sympathy. Toward the end the Native woman narrator said "Custer's last stand" was really the "last stand" of the Natives. The Natives were later left freezing and starving. 

Today we have the "Crazy Horse Monument" out West. 

Errol Flynn was born in Tasmania!

Custer? Maybe it's best to just remember him as a military man trying to do his duty, beholden to others. Why did he attack with such a limited force? Well, once he discovered or suspected that the Indians knew of the cavalry's presence, the Indians were going to start to flee, to disperse. 

The whole thing was disastrous for the U.S. military. And, it seems certain now there was no "last stand" at all. Once the Indians closed in, what do you suppose those poor troops were going to do? Yes "poor," as many were young Irish immigrants susceptible to discrimination, thus they'd join the military for lack of options. 

The troops did not just form a circle and fire away in vain while they could see they were doomed. No! Discipline broke down and soldiers sought to flee. Defenders of the Alamo must have broken down the same way. Davey Crockett did not swing "old Betsy" at the Mexican troops as they advanced up the steps. Crockett was executed. Custer was found with an arrow pushed up his genitals. Welcome to the real world. 

Like it or not, Manifest Destiny was going to prevail. Indeed, as has been written, "history is a messy story of the strong exploiting the weak." 

 

Do we need this?

So is it necessary now for the University of Minnesota to offer a doctoral degree in American Indian Studies? I would simply say no. Endless books have been written about the U.S. West and indigenous people. The information is out there already.

 

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com