No shit. We went to look at some inheritted land in very southeastern Colorado this summer. Damn good thing I had cranked up Google Earth and pulled off GPS coordinates first before we went out there because it all looked the same. God what a mind numbing boring middle of nowhere place that was. And that was NOW with cars and highways and shit. 150 years ago give or take? Holy moly. And I LIKE the desert and isolation for the most part!
In letters mailed back home
her Eastern sisters they would moan
as they would read
accounts of madness, childbirth, loneliness and grief.
That didn’t seem at all realistic to me – more of a ‘look how primitive these Indians are’ putdown.
Are we supposed to believe that Indians knew nothing about sweeteners?
What about honey? There are lots of bees around.
What about maple syrup? There are lots of maple trees around.
What about corn syrup? (Remember the Indians who showed the Pilgrims about corn?)
What about fructose, from all the fruits & berries that grow around here?
For that matter, the first thing that Indian ever tasted – human breast milk is fairly sweet. And Indians of that time were NOT raised on Nestle formula!
The idea that an Indian would be astonished at the taste of sweetness is just plain ridiculous.
There are plenty of accounts of Indians, after being exposed to sugar, using it in great quantities. I don’t find that scene unbelievable.
Refined cane sugar’s a different taste entirely.
Sugar, the other white powder…
That’s no joke: sugar is incredibly addictive.
Watching the movie, it seemed obvious to me that since the Civil War was still going on at the time, the only kind of officer the Federals could spare for such an outpost would be an incompetent mental case. Not very long afterward, presumably when the war was over, you saw Dunbar return to his little camp (to retrieve his diary) and suddenly it was a well-staffed model of military efficiency.
I think the scene is also meant to show the white man’s presence in that part of the continent as somehow pointless and absurd . . . but that makes little sense historically.
If were about to kill myself, I’d piss my pants too, because who gives a fuck about getting to the toilet when you’re going to be dead in 30 seconds? I might also shit them for good measure.
I hope I don’t find your body.
My confuddlement on the whole scene prevented me from realising this point.
Also, Costner’s character hears the gunshot (the suicide), but doesn’t seem to react much. Was gunfire relatively common enough that no one is curious about what is going on? (Much like car alarms today.)
The beginning of the movie has Costner on a Civil War battlefield. The Army there is not shown in the best of light either. (I forget why Costner’s character was driven to attempted suicide by riding back and forth in front of the enemy like that…)
I had assumed that the pissing drunk/insane frontier commander (who addressed Costner as if Costner was a Knight on some quest) was along the same theme.
He rides out because he overhears them saying they may have to amputate his leg(s). He’d prefer death to that.
…Indians weren’t/aren’t ONE PEOPLE. The indians who showed the pilgrims about corn have little in common with the Lakota in the film. And I don’t think Kansas is know for their maple syrup.
That’s right! Thanks! It’s been a while since I’ve seen the film. (I would have sworn that the horse death-ride came before the hospital scene, for example.)
Honey was probably the only real sweetener they had. Cane sugar is even sweeter, tastes different, and is solid rather than liquid.
Sugar maples? Not on the Great Plains.
I’ve never heard that Indians made corn syrup. Since it was originally made by treating corn with hydrochloric acid, and now is produced with enzymes, neither of which the Indians had, I think it’s pretty unlikely they had any knowledge of it.
Neither fruits nor breast milk have nearly the concentrated sweetness of cane sugar.
It’s not just sweetness, it’s the extremely concentrated sweetness in solid form. When cane sugar was first introduced into Europe it was in enormous demand as a luxury product, even though Europeans were quite familiar with honey and fruit.
The Indian’s reaction to tasting cane sugar for the first time was entirely plausible. He would never had encountered anything that sweet before, certainly not as a powder. (In any case, he would probably have assumed the sugar was salt and been shocked by the unexpected taste.)
Did you watch the three-hour theatrical version or the four-hour Director’s cut?
Well, of course not, but all Indian nations did diverge from common post-Bering-crossing ancestors, and as a result they shared certain cultural commonalities, like wearing feathers and saying “How!” and scalping people and not feeling pain and drinking heap much firewater.
I dunno why Indians liked to stand in front of cigar stores. I think it’s some kinda Y-haploid-chromosomal trait or something.