(The above is the beginning of my piece of today on “A Man Called Horse” (1970), which was somehow deleted from the remainder of my post. I apologize for any unintended confusion this may cause to its readers.)
Thank you for your (obviously) very thoughtful reply, Simio!
Oh, by the way, Sandy Howard, the movie’s producer, when–again, according to Ms. Aleiss’s book that is most sympathetic to America’s Indians–when confronted by American Indian activists claiming–once more–that the movie was racist, was able to tick off a list of experts on American Indian culture who stated–and most forthrightly–that the movie was indeed an accurate portrayal of the Sioux at that time in history.
The racist aspect of most well meant films dealing with foreign cultures, but told from the white men’s view, is that mostly in these films the white men show the foreigners how things have to be done.
In A Man Called Horse, and also in its variation Dances with Wolfes, is it again the white man who has to tell the Indians how to fight their enemies, and leads them in their fight.
Hmm, one question, from which side mount the Indians in this film their horses? I have read that they do it from the wrong side, they do it from the left like the Whites do, while according to that article the Sioux mount horses from the right side.
I don’t have a copy of the film, which is btw an ok one, but far from great.
Frankly, the Indians were very grateful to the white man for telling them how things must be done insofar as the Indian gratefully and/or eagerly, depending upon how particular tribes were introduced to them, accepted the white man’s horses and firearms, neither of which existed among the Indians until the white man met the Indian. The Indian also loved the white man’s superior numbers and tactics, as they could use them to destroy those fellow red men who were their foes centuries before Columbus’s discovery of America. This is why the Ute and Jicarilla Apaches eagerly served with Kit Carson in his 1864 expedition against their traditional enemy, the Navajos, why 80 Osage braves most enthusiastically accompanied General Custer on his 1868 Washita expedition against the Cheyenne–Custer preventing the mass slaughter of Cheyenne women and children by ordering these Osage auxiliaries to stop killing these people, and even placing them under armed guard to protect them from their longtime foes, as well as to keep them from bringing other Cheyenne braves and their allies, located nearby, into the melee, later–despite the great hardship of escorting these potential foes through snow that was chest-deep on the Seventh Cavalry’s horses–delivering 53 women and children safe and sound to his initial base of Camp Supply for further safe conduct to a reservation. Shannon Garst’s biography, “Crazy Horse”, also makes abundantly clear that Crazy Horse greatly admired the white man’s way of battle, having come to this conclusion after the slaughter of 2nd Lt. J.L. Grattan’s soldiers by the Sioux, and using the white man’s method of using an army or of any contingent of troops as a united fighting force instead of as a collection of warriors each seeking individual glory–the Sioux way–at Little Big Horn, where Custer was abandoned to his fate by his incompetent–at the very least–subordinates, Major Reno and Captain Benteen, and by the failure of General Crook and Colonel Gibbon to rendezvous with him according to the strategic timetable all of these officers were to follow. Let us also not forget that the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne’s traditional enemies, the Crow, Shoshone, and Arikara scouted for Custer in his last campaign, Crazy Horse was killed by one of his own people, Little Big Man, who committed this killing–perhaps even murder–under no white man’s orders, that Victorio, the great Apache chief, was killed in battle by a traditional enemy, a Tarahumari Indian, one of several such auxiliaries accompanying the Mexican forces of Colonel Joaquin Terrazas that overwhelmed the courageous and clever Apache leader–who may have been a Mexican carried off in childhood by Apache raiders, that Sitting Bull, as several sources attest, was greatly impressed by the white man’s civilization after a tour of the eastern United States ordered by the American government, and that Indian activists from the 19th century up to the present day have been so impressed by the white/western law of property ownership that they adopted–and continue to claim it as their own even though, for centuries, right up to their meeting the white man–and for some time afterward–most American Indians had no concept of land ownership, but culturally appropriated it as a way of gaining sympathy for themselves in their struggles with the white man, both martial and civil, after failing to militarily defeat their Caucasian–and black–foes, which they could never do, given their cultures’ failures to improve the lot of their people in any and all ways. Face it–the Indians were nothing but primitives who never even developed the wheel, without which no true civilization–certainly not an advanced one–is possible, so of course the white man had to show them how anything was to be done, and why the Indian–at the very least–to a great degree–looked to White Civilization to teach him thusly. There is not a single way in which Red Culture was not improved by its contact with White Civilization, be it in warfare, religion, medicine, treatment of children and the elderly, and in anything else. Also, Harris only shows the Sioux how to fight only in the battle that constitutes the movie’s climax, he living–and fighting–according to Sioux custom throughout the rest of the film, using superior white military methods only towards the end of “A Man Called Horse”. As for the film’s depiction of how the Sioux mounted their horses, I have no idea if it is correct or not. What sources does this article of yours, to which you allude, quote–and, most to the point–how trustworthy are they?