The Vikings were brutal too


I just watched this movie for the first time on TCM. Robert Osborn discussed the film with a Native American film critic, who criticized the movie for presenting Native Americans as brutal and making people fear them.

They say that an oppressed people is finally able to lift its collective head when it is able to laugh at itself and find humor in the eccentricities of its culture – the Jews have always been good at this, especially Fran Drescher in “The Nanny”, and African Americans in shows such as “Everybody Hates Chris”, the Mexicans with George Lopez in the lead, and even the Arabs in the Canadian sitcom, “Little Mosque on the Prairie”! But the Native Americans are still too haunted by the violence of their past to have a sense of perspective and humor about themselves.

It is unrealistic for today’s Native Americans to be in denial about the brutality of Indians 200 years ago. Indians WERE brutal in war. Sure, around the house they were like everybody else – loved their kids, kicked their women, laughed and joked. But in war, they DID commit horrible atrocities, not only toward whites but toward other tribes. And “Drums Along the Mohawk” is a movie about Indians at war, not at peace. So why would a Native American film expert criticize this movie for depicting Indian brutality? It happened. That would be like Norwegians being in denial about the Vikings raiding the coast of England for a couple of hundred years. It doesn’t mean that today’s Norwegians rape and pillage. If anyone should be bitter, it should be the Scots toward the English, who “decimated” the Scottish Highlands (killed 9 out of every 10 men and boys), then kicked the remaining Scottish families out of the Highlands during the Highland Clearances, and destroyed the Highland ecology by turning English sheep loose to lay waste the land.

Even the Scots have moved on.



"The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power."
- Julius Caesar, act 2 sc 1

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I get tired myself of various peoples dwelling on their being victimized, stereotyped, etc. Man's inhumanity to man of whatever color, race, religion is universal. We are bastards. Live with it I say. I came from a University that felt compelled to change the name of their sports teams from a native american or Indian reference just for PC reasons. Yet the depiction of a pugilistic mythical midget, a "little person" who is probably drunk -- is the symbol of Notre Dame or the "Fighting Irish". I don't hear outrage from Irish folk.

As for Vikings they raped pillaged plundered many people including the Irish. Yet they are a common sports team name. PC? Don't think so. A lot of local teams are called Saxons. That represents a bunch of wild white guys. Proper for our youth? No, but who cares?

In this movie's case I think the rub is that a gang of non-Indians are playing the stereotyped role of Injuns with guns running amok in violent blood lust while drinking the fire water. In the other shows you mention like The Nanny it's the very same people of the same ilk poking fun at themselves. That is a difference.

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That Indian ought to read about or visit "Cherry Valley" in New York. Maybe he will find out a thing or two about realty. Unfortunately the narrative does not fit in with modern revisionist sentiment. Or political correctness. History is being rewritten as we speak, so get used to it and thank the younger generation.

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To decimate means to remove 1 out of every 10 not 9, but this is an old thread so it hardly matters.

The Long Walk stops every year, just once.

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In the Algonquin language, Mohawk means "Flesh eater"

It's strange that Indians complain about negative representation in old movies (attacking stagecoaches, wagons, cattle drives, etc.) when the censors of the time would never have allowed so many of their atrocities to be put to film. Rape could be hinted at, but how many movies from the 30s-50s, showed a baby's head being bashed on a rock, putting hot coals up a captive's nose, burying someone up to their neck facing the setting sun with their eyelids cut out, cannibalism, or one tribe massacring another for fun? That's just scratching the surface...

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