F Troop movie ideas

An F Troop movie could be a good drama (with a lot of comedy for fans of the series,I guess). Maybe a dramedy.

The Hewkawi were not totally unreal. There were plenty of real Indians who sought to profit from nearby army posts just as much as white settlers did. Often those enterprise involved prostitution and alcohol which would not bee very family friendly subjects.

But Indians also provided other services which were more reputable. For example, in the 1850s the garrison at Fort Defiance, Arizona, found that there was only one place nearby suitable or grazing their horses, mules, etc. So they rented it from a local Navaho headman. When this headman decided he wanted the soldiers to leave the first thing he tried was telling them he would not renew their lease on the vital pasture.

In the 1870s General Crook in Arizona encouraged his fort commanders to contract with various Apaches, newly placed on the reservations, to provide firewood, hay for livestock, etc. This was to get as many of the Apaches as possible to benefit economically from the forts.

Camp Brown in the Wind River Reservation was established to protect the friendly Shoshonie from hostile tribes like the Sioux and Cheyenne. When the hostile tribes were defeated and their danger diminished, the Shoshonie chief Washakie tried to prevent the closing of the economically important base, renamed Fort Washakie in his honor, and succeeded until his death in 1900 aged about 100.

The Little Big Horn is the most famous battle of the Indian wars and often wrongly considered to be the biggest and greatest battle. But the Sioux and Cheyenne are not now independent nations instead their territory is part of the United States. Therefore they must have lost sometime after Custer's Last stand, and one might suppose that the final battle of the Great Sioux War was a gigantic defeat of the Sioux and the greatest battle of the Indian Wars.

Such an armageddon seemed inevitable in August 1876 as the army of General Terry marched south down Rosebud River and the army of General Crook rode north up the Rosebud River, planning to trap thousands of hostile Sioux warriors between them. But the Sioux got out of the way and the war sort of fizzled out.

I have long wanted to make a movie about that battle that never happened, how the West Wasn't Won, involving an effort by Sitting Bull to unite all the tribes in the west against the white men, and a sinister conspiracy by bitter ex-confederates to stir up the tribes and support them with ammunition and guns to get revenge against the United States.

I picture countless thousands of settlers abandoning everything and fleeing east after the news of Custer's Last stand, while regiment after regiment of cavalry is ordered to ride to reinforce Generals Terry and Crook, and the ex rebel conspirators take wagon trains full of guns and ammo toward the camps of the hostiles.

And the peace loving and militarily incompetent protagonists would be sucked into the gathering storm somehow. Perhaps Sitting Bull would plan to sacrifice the otherwise militarily useless Hewkawis by forcing them to distract the US army during a vital manuver by other Sioux forces. Perhaps a ruthless general would plot to get some use out of F Troop by sacrificing them at a vital moment.

Maybe a single individual,such as Wrangler Jane, captain Parmenter, Chief Wild Eagle, or Sergeant O'Rourke, would be in danger, and the others would have to rescue him somehow.

Perhaps Wild Eagle, related to both Geronimo and Sitting Bull, is used to pass communications between them and so gets sucked into the struggle, Perhaps Sitting Bull sends assassin after assassin to kill Captain Parmenter due to his fake reputation as "the Scourge of the west", and maybe the mere name of the "Scourge of the West" is enough to cause thousands of hostiles to surrender or flee in terror.

Perhaps F Troop is ordered to march north and Agaarn keeps misleading Parmenter to turn east while O'Rourke keeps tricking Parmenter to turn west, and as a result they go nearly due north and find themselves trapped between thousands and thousands of cavalry and hostiles. Perhaps something similar happens to the Hewkeais if Sitting Bull threatens them into marching to join his forces.

Perhaps the heroes can find a way to make the theme song come true and cause thousands of paleface and redskins "to both turn chicken" and prevent the great battle.