We stopped briefly at the Bruce Spruce Ranch, a place our daughter and her husband had stayed last year. Although we had planned to stay there tomorrow night, our change in plans meant that we would have to cancel our reservation. Since we were driving right by the ranch, we decided to cancel in person. When we saw the ranch, we were sorry we had to cancel.
It looks like we are finally getting out of Indian Country. Ever since we hit South Dakota, we have been constantly reminded of the hundreds of movies and TV shows we have seen over the years dealing with the Indians west of the Mississippi. For people who have never read any history, it must appear that the only Indian wars were those west of the Mississippi. Those people would be surprised to learn that more Whites were killed by Indians east of the Mississippi than in all of the massacres and Indian wars west of the Mississippi.
Throughout the 1600s and into the early 1800s, people in the East were often at war with a number of different Indian tribes, including the Iroquois (later the Iroquois Confederation) and the Shawnee. In Pennsylvania alone there was the French and Indian War, Pontiac's War, Lord Dunmore's War, the Revolutionary War, and the Indian uprising from 1789 to 1795. My Scots-Irish ancestors in Pennsylvania gave as good as they got. The gentle Quakers who ran the state were shocked at reports of Scots-Irish scalping Indians and perpetrating massacres of Indian villages. You won't find many movies on this chapter of American history. John Ford's classic Drums along the Mohawk is one of the few films dealing with an Indian war east of the Mississippi.
Why has Hollywood ignored the eastern Indians and their numerous killings and massacres?
I have always blamed James Fenimore Cooper for Hollywood's avoidance of such savage Indians as the Iroquois and the Mohawk. Like every kid who has attended high school, Hollywood directors and producers were forced to read one or more of Cooper's turgid Leatherstocking Tales, and probably remembered how boring those stories were. Cooper was popular in his day solely because he was the only person writing about frontiersmen and Indians: "In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
In the fullness of time, people began to recognize the short-comings of Cooper's novels. In 1895, Mark Twain published his famous essay on one of Cooper's books. Twain asserted that Cooper's popular The Deerslayer, a Leatherstocking tale, committed 114 "offenses against literary art out of a possible 115."
Hollywood should at least have made a movie about the charismatic Tecumseh. Uniting a number of Indian tribes in the early 1800s, he fought the Americans for years. When he was killed at the Battle of Thames in Canada, his united movement collapsed. Tecumseh remains the only person, White or Indian, responsible for two different political campaign slogans at the National level. In 1836, Richard Johnson, the man who supposedly killed Tecumseh, campaigned for Vice-President with the sadly forgotten campaign slogan "Rumpsey Dumpsey, Rumpsey Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson Killed Tecumseh." Four years later, William Henry Harrison, who defeated a band of Tecumseh's supporters at Tippecanoe, Indiana, ran for president using the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too." History is so unfair, not a single movie about Tecumseh.
Too bad you did not stay there. At least you saw it and hopefully picked up another sweatshirt!
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