Just an MPSIMS I decided to share. One of the channels I follow is History Buffs, where the host basically looks at popular movies from the perspective of historical accuracy. This one is on Dances with Wolves and it’s pretty good. What I really liked about it is that after he’s done with the review he goes into some of the stuff that’s been happening out in North Dakota with the pipeline protests. I thought it was a really good summary of what’s been happening out there, especially for folks who might not be that familiar with what’s been going down. I especially liked how he talks about how the main stream media has been letting people down on their coverage, relying on the official reports instead of actually sending reporters out there to see what’s happening. Anyway, thought I’d share.
Thank you. The video is well worth watching.
Excellent (if heartbreaking) video, thanks for posting!
DWW is one of my favorite movies and I watch it often. When it first came out 1990?, I noticed problems with it’s historical accuracy. There are many issues you can point out, but two stick out in my mind.
First, portraying the Lakota as being the “victim” of Pawnee raids. I remember reading many years ago that the Lakota were the ass-kickers of their time and had banded together in a confederation of like tribes/peoples. They basically had things their own way during warfare with other non member tribes. If you were taken prisoner by the Lakota, you were finished. They were pretty devious in their punishment/killing of prisoners…
Second, at the very end of the movie there was the scrolling reference to “The great horse culture of the plains ending” Native peoples had been in North America for what 10 or 15 thousand years? The re-introduction of the horse happened just a couple hundred years ago…
Still, DWW is a GREAT movie.
On a side note, IMO, here are not any wild horses roaming around in North America, only “feral” ones.
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Well to be fair, they doubtless were victims of Pawnee raids from time to time. The Lakota were quite numerous and powerful overall, but like all the semi-nomadic Plains tribes they lived in dispersed band settlements for substantial periods of time. Said settlements were not exactly designed for defence ( something the Plains nomads tended to be kind of shit at as a group ), so the bellicose behavior standard on the great Plains just engendered a constant state of petty warfare with tit for tat raids. The Lakota raided the Absaroka, who raided the Siksika, who raided the Cheyenne, who raided the Pawnee, who raided the Lakota and so forth.
What is odd is how the Pawnee seem to have been made sort of the red-haired step-child of Plains Indians. They always seem to be cast as the bad guys, in kind of an inversion of their history as U.S. allies.