With Sitting Bull at the Spirit Lake Massacre

IMDb
I did some research. There really was a Spirit Lake Massacre in which 40-50 settlers were killed by a branch of the Sioux tribe. However, it was NOT the branch from which Sitting Bull originated and the leader was a guy named Inkpaduta. But "Inkpaduta at the Spirit Lake Massacre" doesn't have such a nice ring to it, so the folks changed this and many other details. Four women, not two, were kidnapped--and two of them were then killed. So much for historical accuracy! Is the film still worth seeing? Well, yes. In some ways it is quite good.

It's odd but I have found most portrayals of American Indians in silent films to be better than in sound films from the 1930s-40s. In this case, Sitting Bull is played by a real Indian American. Sure, Chief Yowlachie (whose real name was Daniel Simmons) looked almost nothing like Sitting Bull and he came from the Yakima tribe in Washington, but at least he WAS an Indian! So many films of the sound era feature 'Indians' like Rock Hudson (I am not kidding), Charles Bronson and Iron Eyes Cody (who, despite his looks and his famous commercial in which he cried at the sight of garbage, was an Italian!). Now these guys played leading roles. The assorted Indian extras often were real Indians--but as often as not, they were just white guys painted with dye! Seriously! Also, the film got a few details I liked. Believe it or not, I was impressed by horse poo! Yes, in one tiny scene, you see a dirt street in the village and there's a pile of horse poo there--something you NEVER see in the heavily sanitized Hollywood films of later eras! This was a nice touch. And, the look of the film was quite nice.

Things NOT so admirable, other than historical inaccuracy, was the weird lack of a real resolution at the end of the film. Instead of showing anything, there is an intertitle card that sums up A LOT of action. Then, out of no where, you see the two heroines kissing their beaus! What sort of an ending was this?!



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MOVIE INFO

As helmed by Robert North Bradbury, the silent feature With Sitting Bull at the Spirit Lake Massacre was produced in 1925 but went unreleased until 1927, and was then considered lost for another 80 years. It stars a Native American thespian, Chief Yowlachie, as the famous 19th Century Sioux Indian Sitting Bull. The tale unfolds in the 1860s or 1870s, just outside of Spirit Lake, Iowa, where the burgeoning Caucasian populace continues to claim one Native American settlement after another, indiscriminately. They err (and in a big way) by laying hands on a settlement long promised to the Sioux, located at Spirit Lake proper; this, in turn, rouses the ire of Sitting Bull and prompts him to forcibly reclaim the territory.

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