Here they are either weak drunken allies or vicious enemies - people, like the Abenaki, to be slaughtered like sheep.
As the Rangers march off to deal with the Plains Indians (presumably in the same way they massacred the Abenaki) the movie's rousing music leaves audiences with the impression that it's patriotic to exterminate Native Americans.
^ It was made during the war, you know. You have to have a rousing finale.
shareAnd use Native Americans as the default stand in for the lurking Enemy abroad?
I don't think so.
Dear DakotaSue, you're using 'Moral Relativism'.
You can't expect Jewish/Polish refugees to know anything about PC sensitivities half a century after their death. I bet someone will be bitching about you in 2075.
Ironically enough, it's you who just advanced a moral relativist argument (apparently without being aware of it).
My main beef is what the movie represents today, which is why I used the word "movie" rather than "filmmakers."
While I don't expect "Jewish/Polish refugees" to have more enlightened sensibilities than other whites in mid-century America, my criticism of the movie stands. And the fact that you can't describe the dehumanizing of Native Americans onscreen with anything more profound than "PC sensitivities" says a lot about your empathic qualities. In short, you don't give a *beep*
I bet someone will be bitching about you in 2075.
Fiddle, dee, deeh!
shareDakotaSue is predictably -- and ridiculously -- using the "politically correct" mindset of the modern era to trash something that happened over two hundred years ago during a very different period in history.
The Abenaki Indians were raiding down into New England from what is now Canada, killing and kidnapping -- with the occasional tortures and degradations many Native American Indians indulged in with their victims and prisoners -- English Colonial farmers and settlers at the behest of the Abenaki's French allies.
If English Colonial farmers and settlers had been regularly raiding into Abenaki territory and killing, capturing, and torturing Abenakis, would DakotaSue be so quick to be against the Abenakis marching on an English military strongpoint and wiping it out?
Doubtful.
I agree rac701. In the long view of human experience on earth, hasn't the land always belonged to those who could take and hold it?
shareI kept wondering if raids such as the one depicted would put an end to the raids they are in revenge for or simply motivate the Abenacki to make more of them. Of course that's the way with war. it tends to justify itself to its partipants.
The past is a series of presents. The present is living history we are privileged to witness
Looked to me like the rangers objective was to wipe out the Abenacki. The attack on the village was nothing short of a massacre.
shareThe Abenaki were a fit and warlike people and a quite sophisticated one too, quite aware of the political and social situation of the time. It does them a disservice to consider them mere victims.
shareAt least the producers appear to have saw fit to actually use some native Americans in the cast instead of just "red face" up a bunch of whites. Mind you it doesn't seem too many were actually credited.🐭
shareEverybody seems to be missing the huge structure containing dozens of scalps of white settlers that was toppled during the raid on the Abenacki village, or the graphic telling of gruesome torture previously.
shareEnglish settlers, not white. The Abenaki got on quite well with the French and many were part French and were Catholic. An interesting fact is that the Abenaki headman at St. Francis was born English but captured as a child and raised as French and then later as an Abenaki.
shareI see you are playing the PC card!!!!!
shareWatching a movie that celebrates the slaughter of Native Americans is stomach turning.
share