I just learned that E.L. Doctorow’s next novel will be about them, probably making it even more likely that a movie will someday be made: An Excerpt From E.L. Doctorow's Next Novel
I currently live in Montgomery, Alabama and grew up about 40 miles north in an area that was called “The Hornet’s Nest” in the 18th century because it was one of the most densely populated regions of the Creek Indian territories.
Movies I’d like to see made (or at least settings I’d like to see as movies):
A documentary about the formation of the Confederacy, which occurred in Montgomery. It was an interesting series of conferences and Congressional sessions with many distinguished reps fighting the notion of secession to the last possible minute. (As with John Dickinson at the Continental Congress, many anti-secessionists later joined the military of the new nation they did not want formed.)
A movie about the Creek Indian removal. It was a few years later than and separate from the Trail of Tears, and had quite a few horror stories of its own. At one point there was a concentration camp where the Montgomery Civic Center is now (there’s no signage or anything to commemorate its existence) where thousands of Creeks were crammed into a tiny area to await the boats to take them west. “Low bidder contracts” for their transport meant that the goal was to make as much profit as possible and one easy way to cut costs was to not feed them more than enough to barely keep them alive (and if a few died, so what?).
The sounds of their hunger cries and misery became so powerful that many settlers who had literally been waiting for their removal so they could take over the territory, many of them veterans of Indian wars and with no love of the Indians at all, couldn’t take it and started sending food over the walls and even sending in cattle and hogs. (Still not enough to go around, but it helped.) Then the same low bidders rounded so many onto riverboats that at least two sank and many Indians drowned. It’s not a pleasant story obviously, but it’s one that needs to be filmed.
From the rural area where I grew up I’d love to see the story of Fort Toulouse/Jackson filmed. It’s a fascinating family saga that begins when the French fort is built ca. 1714; its captain, Jean Baptiste Marchand, married or at least cohabited with a Creek woman named Sehoy and produced two children- Sehoy Marchand and her brother, Red Shoes. By some accounts Marchand was killed in a mutiny soon after this, though this is not confirmed.
Though Red Shoes and Sehoy were both half-French/half-Creek, but the mother’s line was all that mattered so both were fully Creek. While there was no such thing as an ‘Indian princess’ exactly, there was definitely a sort of aristocracy, and as members of the Wind Clan (the Koasati) of the Muscogee/Creek nation they were among it. Red Shoes became a powerful chief (and inveterate alcoholic) who fought for and against the whites for most of his life. His sister Sehoy Marchand married a Scottish trader, Lachlan McGillivray, who established a trading post on the ruins of the fort and became a very wealthy man with property (and wives) scattered from Charleston to the former Fort Toulouse.
Lachlan lost most of his more than substantial property for siding with the British during the Revolution and returned to Scotland. He had several children with Sehoy including one son, Alexander McGillivray, whom the Creeks called “Boy King”. Alex was educated in white schools in Charleston and Savannah, fluent in English and French and the native languages, and had a fascinating life. (I’d cast Johnny Depp in the role.) He was as white or as Indian as the situation called for; people at George Washington’s ‘court’ in NYC expecting to see a half-naked painted savage walk in during a treaty talk were astonished to see a handsome young man in broadcloth suit (with just a couple of accessories), while English visitors in [what’s now] Alabama expecting to meet the young mixed-blood aristocrat they’d heard described as white in all but ancestry were a bit shocked to find a man wearing a buckskin kilt and chief’s paint and tattoos and other “full Injun” apparel, though accessorized with a white cotton shirt and ostrich feathers, and standing with his wives (plural).
Alexander went Red Shoes (who was in the Creek world far more a father to him than Lachlan as boys were raised by their mother’s brothers or uncles) one better, fighting for or with or against the Spanish, the British, the Americans, and the French- whichever one benefitted him at the time. He was a general in both the Spanish and American armies and received a large pension from the English. He died young due largely to a dissipated lifestyle.
Alex’s sister, Sehoy III, produced (among many other children) his nephew William Weatherford. (Again, your sister’s children are more important to you than your biological children in a matrilineal society.) William was called “Red Eagle” because of his red hair and blue eyes, and he lived as a wealthy white man for a time, though he also lived in Indian style at times and took half-blood wives (monogamously).
He was very much against the Creek civil war that occurred during the war of 1812, fought hard to keep the Creeks from attacking Federal troops and knew they would lose, and yet almost overnight he did a complete about face and actually led the Creeks in battle and may have been present when they killed hundreds of men, women, and children at Fort Mims. Why this turnabout happened is unknown but it was instant and 180; theories include that the anti American Creeks threatened Weatherford’s family, or that he saw or heard something that let him know the whites intended to take the Creek lands, and many other reasons (some the result of romantic historians), but he became the Wrath of God for the Creek nation that was opposed to the U.S., and had a horseback leap into the river that grew with every retelling (probably an impressive but not miraculous 8 foot plunge but roughly the same as jumping into Niagara Falls by the time it’s been repeated a few times).
Enter Andrew Jackson. After skirmishes he completely destroys the Creek nation’s military might at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend with the help of his troops and his Cherokee and Creek allies [again, this was a Creek against Creek civil war as much as it was U.S. v. Creek]). Among Jackson’s allies are two of Weatherford’s brothers. Among the dead at Horseshoe Bend are not just Creek warriors but women and children (and among the survivors the Creek baby Jackson adopts).
Weatherford himself is not at Horsehoe Bend but attempting to raise a second army. He is resolved to continue fighting until his wife dies in childbirth, possibly a result of malnutrition.
Meanwhile Jackson has rebuilt Weatherford’s great-grandfather’s fort, Fort Toulouse, and called it Fort Jackson. Into this encampment, almost exactly one century after his great-grandfather established the fort, Weatherford walks through its gates to surrender. By all accounts, Jackson is stunned by Weatherford’s bravery and his frankness (he tells Jackson that if he had another army he’d keep fighting until all whites are dead) and his offer to trade his own life for supplies for his people. Jackson accepts his surrender and tells his men “who would kill this man would rob the coins from a dead man’s eyes”.
He also forces Weatherford and other chiefs to sign surrender papers that cede 23 million acres of Creek lands to the U.S. government. Many if not most of not most of the villages on those 23 million acres belonged to the Creeks who were loyal to and fought alongside the U.S. troops. Jackson could not care less.
Anyway, I think it’d be a good miniseries.
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Ken Burns did a good job of it.
There was a novel closely based on their lives called My Brother’s Keeperby Marcia Davenport that was a bestseller in the '50s. It changed their names and fictionalized their pasts a bit (as any movie would) to provide a hypothesis for “what leads somebody from a generally normal life to living like they did” question, but the later lives and deaths of the characters were almost exactly those of the Collyers.
My choice: The Winnie Ruth Judd murders and her history afterwards. The murders occurred in Phoenix. It’s been years since I’ve read Jana Bommersbach’s The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd but I remember it being pretty interesting and most importantly LOCAL (very rare here in forgotten Phoenix). There is not much on the her Wiki page but if memory serves, there was some hinkyness surrounding the murder of two women. I’ve got to get my hands on another copy of this book so that I can refresh my memory. But a good true crime case from Phoenix!
Alexandria, VA rolls over pretty quickly for invaders; twice for the British and once for the dreaded Yankees. We’re not proud of it, but we don’t candy coat it. If they ever do an American version of Blackadder, he should definitely be some sort of Alexandria-based politician during one (or all; it is Blackadder!) periods.
I’d like a movie on gold, silver and precious gem stones found in Wisconsin. Not to involve the lead or iron mining that is always covered in the Great Lakes region. I found in archives that our town had a gold essayer. I found out after that we have a lot of stuff in our glacial drift. The Eagle Diamond was one such find.
I also have a found a number of treasure stories and closed up caves in archives that could be a good show.
Montgomery is a place where people wanting to return [what is erroneously believed to be] the Confederate flag over the state capitol is still in the news every few years. It’s always been ironic to me that when the Yankees came to Montgomery the legislators and powers that be had no problem whatsoever taking it down- in fact couldn’t take it down fast enough. Same with Selma and Tuscaloosa and many other cities where you still see it flying in many yards and houses and trailers and on cars.
The Bath School Disaster would make a very powerful true-crime story: Bath School disaster - Wikipedia
That’s a great one!
But of course AZ was only part of Mexico for about a generation, and in fact the Californios deeply resented being part of Mexico. Before Mexico, it belonged to Spain for around 70 years. Before that AZ belonged to the one of the Pima indian tribes, likely the Sobaipuri- for about 100 years. They took it from the Hohokam, probably, although its possible it was a peaceful merge. The Hohokam existed in that area for around 1400 years. Who’s the rightful owner then?
Even while AZ was technically part of Mexico, Mexico’s control was tenuous- most of the time the Apaches and other tribes ruled the area. Note that in 1831 Tuscon only had 465 “Mexicans” while the same census listed rather more Indians.
While it is true that the Americans had Mexico at the point of a gun, Mexico was only too glad to accept the very generous $18,250,000 that the USA paid for those territories, (generally considered more trouble than they were worth) as Mexico was pretty well bankrupt. Not quite “taken by force”, although certainly the threat was there. My guess is that Mexico likely would have taken the cash war or no war.
Per wiki “There were approximately 80,000 Mexicans in the areas of California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas during this period and they made up about 20% of the population” (and there were quite a few Americans living there too, as well as Natives). So,in fact the “Mexican” blood in that area was pretty damn thin.
The Natives- as usual- got the real hosing.
I’d like to see the story of the Portola expedition.
You dismiss the Mexican population as being there for only “about a generation.” Their government changed, their families didn’t. The American presence there, by comparison, was a lot more recent. A lot of white Arizonans of this period were a spillover from Texas; Lots of Tennessee volunteers poured into Texas to help los Tejanos fight their Mexican oppressors. Once they got there, they decided to stay and stake claims to the place.
That’s how nations are formed, I guess.
Sampiro, I’m completely jealous of your region’s crazy history. I’m all for the mini-series!
Astonishingly, we’ve never had a good movie about Andrew Jackson’s war on the Creeks, or the Trail of Tears. The latter boggles the mind. What is Hollywood thinking?
I’d like to see an Apocalypto style (North) American Indian, prehistoric, action piece with the Mound People as focus (Serpent Mound, Ohio Mounds, Great Black Swamp.)
A sweeping, Southern Death Cultepic in scope and breadth… with a story, of course. Maybe even including Tecumseh’s rise and Little Turtle’s fall at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, and ultimately, the extinction of their culture.
Be great to do a Master and Commander style epic on Lake Erie following the naval exploits and victory of Commadore Oliver H. Perry (His middle name was Hazard, literally.) in the war of 1812. One of our most significant and earliest Naval coups, as a nation.
Old Hickory doesn’t have anything on Mad Anthony.
Doña Toda’s trip with her grandson Sancho el Craso (“the fat”) of León to Córdoba. The woman was related to every single king in Spain and stubborn enough to scare even her compatriots.
Sancho the Greater’s story is kind’a too complicated for a movie, I think a miniseries would work better.
The story of Sancho the Strong’s work at Las Navas is unbelievable enough that for many years historians thought the reports were exagerated (starting with his enormous size, which was verified some 15 years ago to be true).
It isn’t “the history of my region,” but a good series on Magellan’s trip could be neat.
Agreed. See post 27.
For that matter, you could do a great movie about the War of 1812 service of the USS Constitution. A movie about the naval expedition against the Barbary Pirates could also kick ass, although it might be a bit expensive to film, even with CGI.
No, I dismiss the Mexican population for being only 20%. I dismiss calling that area historically part of Mexico, as it was part of Spain much longer.