"Dances with Wolves"--why does the officer piss in his pants?

[Colibri]

@BrainGlutton

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.

Don’t forget Hinduism.

[Gary_T]

@Bri2k

A good novel to read for background on what life was like for those men is Evan McConnell’s Son of the Morning Star.

While McConnell did write some novels, Son of the Morning Star isn’t one of them. It’s non-fiction, a biography/history of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. A damn good one, though, as you say.

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

Connell, not McConnell.

[Gary_T]

@pseudotriton_ruber_ruber

Connell, not McConnell.

:smack:

[Clark_Cello]

@Gary_T

While McConnell did write some novels, Son of the Morning Star isn’t one of them. It’s non-fiction, a biography/history of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. A damn good one, though, as you say.

Seconded, one of my favorite books.

[mlees]

@BrainGlutton

I dunno why Indians liked to stand in front of cigar stores. I think it’s some kinda Y-haploid-chromosomal trait or something.

Panhandling?

You think someone would have told them to get a job!

[Koxinga]

Must be the same gene that causes them to weep when someone litters. (Or is that Sicilian?)

[billfish678]

@BrainGlutton

I dunno why Indians liked to stand in front of cigar stores. I think it’s some kinda Y-haploid-chromosomal trait or something.

I know one thing for sure. That wooden stare creeps me the fuck out.

[Alessan]

@Colibri

Honey was probably the only real sweetener they had. Cane sugar is even sweeter, tastes different, and is solid rather than liquid.

I doubt nomads like the Plains nations kept bees. They may have cracked open the occasional wild hive, but that would be a pretty rare occurrence.

[Chimera]

Especially since Honey Bees are not native to North America. They were imported by the Europeans.

[Areyto]

Actually I believe the scene is kind of serious since I belive the officer had untreated syphillis which is why he was acting deranged. In that sense it fits in with the movie because it goes to show the perils of being in an outpost. In other words, we are worned, that if things like this can happen in an outpost close to the frontier, even though well established and stocked, Dancing with Wolves can encounter even greater dangers once he leaves.

@chappachula

Dances with Wolves is one of my favorite movies because it has many realistic moments*.

But one part of the plot was just weird: when the Army officer orders Kevin Costner to travel to the abandoned army outpost, then pisses in his pants and commits suicide. Huh ? What the hell was that for?
The plot have worked better by treating that scene seriously. Instead of an officer acting like a buffoon, why not have a serious and intelligent officer say to Costner " I’m sending you to an outpost on the far frontier…Go out there… and tell us what you learn."

*I especially like the various scenes filmed inside the tepee, where I feel like I’m seeing the way the Indians really lived…examples :
–The nervous meeting in the main teepee where several people forcefully expresss their ideas about how to respond now that the white man is arriving, but then fall respectfully silent when the chief utters his decision.
– The scene where the soldier rides up to the Indian village for the first time, and a terrified mother grabs her children to protect them.
– A very small, but real, moment: the scene where the 2 Indians go into the army outpost, and one of them tastes sugar for the first time. His look of surprise at the new taste, and then the way he drops a handfull of sugar back into the sack, totally unaware of western social customs

[Inigo_Montoya]

• gratuitous zombie remark *
  Sounds like an interesting movie, I might have to watch it. But man, I really hate Costner as an actor.

[Yllaria]

@Chimera

Especially since Honey Bees are not native to North America. They were imported by the Europeans.

It’s been two years, but knowing that bees can go feral, I had to google it. From Honey Bees Across Americaby Brenda Kellar

Brought to . . . America in 1622 it would be 231 years before the honey bee reached the west coast.

1662 + 231 = 1891

Hmmm. Civil war - 1861 to 1865.

So they weren’t to the west coast by then, but they might have made it to the prairies. Maybe. I doubt I’m going to get more than a maybe today. And if I have sense, I won’t google any further.

Sorry for the interruption. Sugar would still be surprising, whether they had access to honey or not.

[bup]

@Yllaria

So [bees] weren’t to the west coast by then, but they might have made it to the prairies. Maybe. I doubt I’m going to get more than a maybe today. And if I have sense, I won’t google any further.

[del]I was going to suggest that Mormons brought bees with them to Utah in the late 1840’s, because I was under the impression beekeeping was a literal industry of that colony, but a little googling shows it may have been just metaphorical symbolism and Mormon scripture which linked Utah with beehives.

I’m not sure if I’m more or less ignorant than I was 10 minutes ago.[/del]

Honey bees did not naturally cross the Rocky Mountains; they were transported by the Mormon pioneers[7] to Utah in the late 1840s, and by ship to California in the early 1850s.

[Inigo_Montoya]

Awesome thread drift! So, no native N. American plants need honeybees to do their naughtywork? I really had no idea. I’d have thought in a million or so year that at least a couple of queens could have gotten blown here accidentally. Queen bees, I mean. Blown here on the winds after maybe getting caught in an updraft–it sometimes rains fish FFS, so it just seems odd no bees crossed the ocean.

[Damfino]

Check the wikipedia page for “honeypot ants”. Some species exist in North America .

[Yllaria]

@bup

. … Honey bees did not naturally cross the Rocky Mountains; they were transported by the Mormon pioneers[7] to Utah in the late 1840s, and by ship to California in the early 1850s.

Cool. I really liked the part about the bees spreading ahead of the pioneers. Little bestingered harbingers.

@The Great Sun Jester

Awesome thread drift! So, no native N. American plants need honeybees to do their naughtywork? . . .

Looks like it. Although there were other sorts of bees that might have done the same sort of work.