THE DAY THE GOOD GUYS WON

One particularly unforgettable Saturday afternoon in this writer’s memory took place almost countless years ago while attending a movie theater matinee. Since the custom in those times was to devote that part of any given week catering to the very young generation by featuring thrill-laden action films, the bill-of-fare offered Tonka, a Walt Disney Studios production.

Tonka was the name of an undoubtedly fictitious horse which happened to serve as a mount for General George Armstrong Custer’s ill-fated Seventh Cavalry at Little Big Horn. Although this wouldn’t be the writer’s normal plans for Saturday PM entertainment, the occasion was rather special, in accompanying a young son and a battery of his cronies immediately following a home-based birthday party.

What remains especially memorable about said film is how the Disney folk had created the buildup for and the carrying out of that famous battle. In case any readers may be short on their U.S. history recollections, this was one day when the Indians emerged victorious, leaving absolutely no Seventh Cavalry survivors to regale their grandchildren decades later with exaggerated tales about the skirmish at Little Big Horn.

The decided villains in this movie were Custer and his merry men, and we must accord the studio due credit for painting him as the real (as they say in Yiddish) schmuck he truly happened to be. In turn, his fellow horsemen didn’t exactly come across as nice home-loving chaps.

Obviously, therefore, by simple process of elimination, the Sioux warriors filled the good guys role, kind to their mothers and all that. Consequently, as the bitter battle roared across the screen, every time a Redskin bit the dust, the entire audience on hand (some 95% kids as we’ve already explained) would groan in exasperation. However, each cavalryman falling from his horse brought on a rousing cheer. Finally, when General Custer stopped a bullet (or maybe an arrow, because memory fails) and hit the dirt mortally wounded, the young audience yelled with fervor equal to that attached to watching a favorite ballcarrier execute a lengthy touchdown run. The boys were exalted.

As for our kindly horse Tonka, whether he survived the onslaught or not has been forgotten. The key point to stress is that on said day in American western history the Indians – the good guys – took the marbles.

We must confess to having been frightfully long-winded in the opening to this piece. Nevertheless, that single movie (well, there have been others of better quality reaching toward the same goal) represented the antithesis to how those we now patronizingly refer to as Native Americans were consistently referred to on the silver or multi-colored screens as “savages” or by other appropriate slurs – even “prairie niggers” on one fortunately isolated occasion.

The sad part is that such oftentimes negative opinions expressed on theater and old film TV reruns reflect a common feeling among much of the majority group populace in this so-called equal rights and privileges country. Must this be? Why, this writer often feels compelled to ask, do the American Indians of recent centuries past deserve such down-our-noses disrespect? Were they really wrong in wanting to protect their hunting grounds and their ability to roam freely within their established territories? Had they no right to resist Whitey’s ever-increasing westward movement, to take over the North American universe to his supposedly progressive liking?

Just consider again the afore-mentioned term Native American. Shouldn’t that amount to more than an allegedly polite title? So far as we can determine, they were here first. They owned the joint. The migrants from across the Atlantic were invaders. Friendly, well-meaning ones, though? Like hell they were. In more than one recorded incident, they proved to be as arbitrarily brutal at conducting bloody massacres of Indians as any attributed to the frowned-upon Redskins. Rather shamefully, the history books make little or no mention of the atrocities committed by the paleface on a people trying to defend their homeland.

Eventually and inevitably, the invasion force prevailed, due to its “superior” education and “advanced” technology for the time. One by one, previously hostile Indian tribes agreed to cease their opposition due to de facto defeat, in return for fair settlement treatment. Wow! The promises for comfortable reservation-area living dished out by the conquering masters rate among U.S. or any other nation’s history as the mightiest of whoppers. The oft-quoted expression “White man speak with forked tongue” couldn’t have been more accurate. A reasonable amount of library or internet research will spell this situation out pretty clearly, from broken oath to broken oath and sub-human act to sub-human act.

As opposed to their black counterparts, the Indians weren’t hauled across the ocean waves in the cargo holds of cattle boats. They were here at the outset, when Jamestown, Virginia became settled and the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Some proved to be friendly hosts, but others didn’t, for readily plausible reasons. In the long run, they were rendered a much dirtier deal than the enslaved captives from African shores – who have since succeeded in emerging phoenix-like from the ashes, after a once seemingly interminable struggle.

However, the expression “Lo, the poor Indian” continues to apply. No need ever existed for an act equivalent to the Emancipation Proclamation, since they theoretically had their freedom already. Unfortunately, their race has never produced a Jackie Robinson, a Martin Luther King, or a Barack Obama. Their small relative U.S. population (1.5%), has likely helped prevent such from happening. Concerted efforts on their behalf by Marlon Brando et al have proven relatively fruitless. In any event, it appears much too late.

In our customary humble opinion, though, they do deserve recognition as the “good guys” from certain standpoints, or at least the “valiant land defenders”, if nothing more. What a shame they didn’t fare better. The cards were simply stacked against them.

Still, does Whitey actually earn everlasting blame for horning into hitherto “private” property, and deciding that he had the sacred right to take over? Looking back over our collective shoulders, we must grudgingly admit the effort has been worth it, despite the fact that such actions virtually destroyed a once happier race.