The Big Lie in the Comancheros
A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a propaganda technique and logical trick (fallacy). The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". Hitler believed the technique was used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist and antisemitic political leader in the Weimar Republic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
If the USA was at war with the comancheros as a group when the movie The Comancheros (1961) was made, I would have thought that the movie was an anti-comanchero propaganda movie to raise support for the war effort.
But of course there weren't any comancheros to fight and there hadn't been any for decades, so the movie The Comancheros (1961) was just a fictional movie made made for the propose of making money and not to whip up hate for the comancheros.
There were real comancheros who traded with the Comanche from about 1785 to the final defeat of the Comanche in the Buffalo or Red River War of 1874 to 1875. The real comancheros were a lot less sinister than the ones in the movie, although I doubt that all of their trading was entirely innocent.
The Comancheros were traders based in northern and central New Mexico who made their living by trading with the nomadic Great Plains Indian tribes, in northeastern New Mexico, West Texas, and other parts of the southern plains of North America[1]. Comancheros were so named because the Comanches, in whose territory they traded, were considered their best customers. They traded manufactured goods (tools and cloth), flour, tobacco, and bread for hides, livestock and slaves from the Comanche. As the Comancheros did not have sufficient access to weapons and gunpowder, there is disagreement about how much they traded these with the Comanche.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanchero
Obviously comancheros who bought slaves from the Comanches might have ranged from noble persons who intended to set the captives free all the way to evil persons who wanted to sell the slaves for the highest price.
The big lie in the movie, which would have qualified it as wartime propaganda if made while the USA was in a hypothetical war with the comancheros, is the claim that the Comanche attacks on the Texans were mysterious and inexplicable, with the implication that the movie's secret society of comancheros had incited the Comanche attacks.
What do you find that's so interesting
about this miserable country?
I used to own a cattle
spread over there.
- You were a rancher?
- Yeah.
2,000 head of longhorn.
Indians run you out?
No. They weren't any trouble then.
Not till a few years ago.
Something's stirrin' them up now.
Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=the-comancheros
- Major.
- Hi, Jake.
- I got a little surprise for you.
- Yeah?
Yeah. Something that may prove that
theory you've been bending our ears with.
- You mean a gang running the Comanches?
- Yeah.
Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=the-comancheros
In real life Comanches were terrible, horrible neighbors, and Texans were terrible, horrible neighbors, so when both groups lived in Texas separated by only a few hundred miles of unoccupied land they "didn't need no stinking comancheros" to start bitter fighting between them.
So the movie The Comancheros (1961) could be considered an effort to shift the blame for the Comanche Wars in Texas from the Comanches and the Texans onto a third party and sweep incidents like the Council House Fight on March 19, 1840 under the rug. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_House_Fight
share