MovieChat Forums > Stolen Women, Captured Hearts (1997) Discussion > The true story behind the movie

The true story behind the movie

posted 20 years ago by monique79
17 replies | jump to latest

I loved the movie and luckily the Lifetime channel had it on today so I was able to make myself a copy!
I was searching the web just now about Anna Brewster Morgan and unfortunately her true story is not like the movie. She was married for only 1 month and her brother was a preacher. Anna did not know Sarah, Sarah was taken away from another city earlier and was with the Cheyenne. Anna was taken by the Sioux and later traded to the Cheyenne, there she and Sarah met. They did try to escape once but were caught and were supposedly beaten. It was less than a year they were in captivity but General Custer did rescue them. Anna ended up having a baby named Ira who was half Indian. The baby died two years later. Anna had 3 kids after that child with her husband but the marriage ended and she moved in with her preacher brother. The sad thing is that her town never accepted her after she came back and in her later days she was committed to a mental institution and died in the early 1900's. It was alleged that she confessed to a neighbor how she wished she was never rescued. So that fact with the fact that she did have a baby with an Indian makes me think maybe her captivity was not that bad. The reality is nothing like the movie but hey wouldn't it have been nice?
I love learning about different cultures and the Native American culture is very fascinating, unfortunately alot of the movies about them are very stereotypical or all about cowboys and indians which is only one part of a great long history. I would recommend the movie Smoke Signals also I am trying to find the movie Dance Me Outside, if I ever get it, I will let you all know how it is!

[–] djm724 20 years ago

I have the movie Dance Me Outside. It is an excellent movie. It stars Adam Beach and Michael Greyeyes from Stolen Women is also in it. I really hope you get the chance to see it, because it really is a great movie.

[–] lakotadreaming 20 years ago

Dance Me Outside is my favorite movie. Who can go wrong when you got the very good looking and talented Adam Beach and Michael Greyeyes in a move together?? It was a treat just like Squanto: A Warrior's Tale with Adam Beach and Eric Schweig. I too love learning about the Native Americans. They truly are beautiful people and have a beautiful culture.

[–] Jhag2 20 years ago

Thank you so much for your write up on the movie. I had wanted to read the true story on which the movie was loosely based. I never could find the information, and it seems you have. I would like to read about it myself, altho you gave a good rendition of it. How did you find the information on the web about the true story, and is it hard to log on to it? Would like to read it for myself, as I have tried for several years. Many many thanks, and I also agree with everything you said. Would also like to find the movie dance Me Outside, any info will be appreciated. Thanks.

[–] Kitty-47 19 years ago

This page: http://www.geocities.com/Clay_Hogg/DelphosKS1.html

Scroll down the page for the information.

[–] ntfrenk 17 years ago

This is so sad! I'm glad that in the movie they get back together, although the ending is somewhat sad nevertheless.

[–] Sheila_Beers 19 years ago

I appreciate knowing the true-life story that inspired this film about Anna Brewster. People today do not understand the fear white settlers had of Indians because settlers, for the most part, considered Indians dangerous heathens with strange social, sexual, and religious practices. Women who were abducted by Indians were assumed to have their virtue compromised (a term from the Victorian era) by sexual experiences with Indian men. As a result, due to the mores of the 19th century, such women and girls were considered "damaged" and unsuitable for marriage to any white man in "polite society."

This same attitude extended to rape victims, women stranded in awkward social situations while in the company of men, divorced women (in many cases), unwed mothers, unchaste single women, and even young women whose engagements were broken by their fiances'. The usual solution to a broken engagement was a "breach of promise" suit filed by the jilted girl and her parents so that the young man would be forced to pay for any perceived or possible damage to the young lady. If the young lady was fortunate, another young man in her circle of friends would care enough to marry her on short notice and make an "honest woman" of her. If she was not fortunate, she was doomed to spinsterhood with the award from the breach of promise suit as a consolation. Other alternatives might be to enter a convent or devote one's life to charitable or domestic work. Those guilty of moral improprieties might be forced into prostitution because "respectable" work would be denied to them.

In addition to being considered "damaged" and unsuitable for marriage, girls and women in the above-mentioned categories were shunned by society and considered objects of shame and disgrace. It is not surprising that the real Anna was put into a mental institution, as that sort of place was a "dumping ground" for women who failed to live up to society's expectations in the 1800s.It was a harsh and unforgiving reality and one that people today (especially young people) find very difficult to understand.

It was nice that the film showed a happy ending with Anna choosing to return to the Indian tribe. It is no wonder that so many women abducted by Indians did, in fact, choose to embrace Indian culture rather than the white society that had so little understanding or forgiveness toward them.

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[–] dbellmyer 19 years ago

If you check some of the other discussions, I have put up the real facts about these characters. The information comes from a book called Pioneer Women:Voices From the Kansas Frontier by Joanna L. Stratton. I heard about the book in an interview with Jeanine Turner, who plays Anna Brewster Morgan in the film. She said that the writer got the idea for the script from this book and the true story of Anna Brewster Morgan. Of course, the screen writer made a few changes for dramatic effect and commercial success, etc. I like the movie version much better than the real life version; her life ended in a very sad way.
If you read the book by J.Stratton (which is historically researched; it's valid), Anna actually was very fond of her Sioux husband. He brought her gifts, and the only work he expected her to do was taking care of his horse. She said that she thought very highly of him because he was so kind to her. She did not want to go back to white society and her husband.

Before her marriage, Anna said that she and Sarah were treated well as long as they did their chores and did not try to escape. They did try to escape once, and she said that they were whipped. The escape attempt was before her marriage. After the failed attempt, she decided to make the best of her situation, and when the Indian leader proposed, she accepted. One of her close friends provided a lot of information for the book by Stratton. She said that Anna did not want to return to her white husband, that she never forgot her time with the Sioux, and that she suffered from melancholy the rest of her life; she often told her friend that she wished that she had never been found by the whites. Her Indian child died at the age of two.

[–] shadycady 17 years ago

I will definitely put that book on my reading list. I always read those type of books about pioneer women and their life out on the frontier. My great-grandparents were Kansas pioneers in Osborne County, Kansas during the 1880s.

Mommy to two little monsters

[–] purplish-1 9 years ago

It always bothered me that they captured the women back, only to treat them like crap when they got back. It wasn't about the women at all, it was about male pride. Anna Brewster ended up in an asylum.

If the girls were "tainted" anyway, why take them back? Just leave them where they were happy.

[–] whitespirit26 7 years ago

Kidnapped, beaten, traded and brainwashed? Her Sioux "husband" had no right to her and she had no business cheating on her husband.

[–] joe_538 7 years ago

Psychological mind games to break a captive's will likely contributed to her emotional state. If a captive/prisoner/slave received "good treatment" one day, he or she was likely subjected to abuse the next day. Punishment, hard labor, starvation, and beatings were alternated with isolated acts of kindness. Many captives became helpless, emotional wrecks as a result.

The idea Anna was leading a happy existence as a slave of the Cheyenne didn't exist until after her death. It was simply another story circulated by a writer who wasn't there, trying to profit off someone else's experience.

[–] whitespirit26 7 years ago

Amen to that!

[–] whitespirit26 7 years ago

"It was nice that the film showed a happy ending with Anna choosing to return to the Indian tribe."

Happy ending? The tramp cheated on her sweet husband and then abandoned him for the man who stole her. She's pathetic and so is the ending.

"It is no wonder that so many women abducted by Indians did, in fact, choose to embrace Indian culture rather than the white society that had so little understanding or forgiveness toward them."

But the Indians "understood" them? You know some of them raped white women and mutilated men? Any woman choosing to stay with that suffers from Stockholm Syndrome.

[–] sxymommacitaprincess_227 9 years ago

What I dont understand is why the real life Anna didnt just run away and go back to her Sioux husband? If she was that miserable then why didnt she go back to him?

[–] Lucy9596 9 years ago

Probably it wasn't just a few miles to ride, maybe she didn't think she could find him again?

Will Graham: I don't find you that interesting.
Hannibal Lecter: You will.

****

[–] whitespirit26 7 years ago

In reality, the natives weren't so nice, kidnapping women and beating them. It's pathetic how Lifetime tried romanticizing this, when in reality both the natives and the whites mistreated Anna. I wonder if the whites did bc they thought she willingly cheated on her husband.

[–] joe_538 7 years ago

the fact that she did have a baby with an Indian makes me think maybe her captivity was not that bad.

Not every female captive was given a choice when it came to starting a family. White captives could be raped several times while attending daily chores in the village. As much as people criticize movies for negative depictions of Indians, the reality could be much worse than what's shown on the screen.

Peter J. Powell badly distorts the captivity experience of Anna Brewster Morgan and Sarah White. One might get the idea by reading Powell that being an Indian captive was akin to enjoying a picnic in the park. On the contrary, Morgan was beaten and raped by her captors, and later gave birth to a half-Indian child. She told her rescuers about her horrible treatment, things that the soldiers were reluctant to repeat. When she returned to the white world, her husband made her life intolerable by never letting her forget the misery she experienced. Anna told a female friend that she would rather be poor than have the "dreadful facts" of her captivity be known. She said her capture put a blight on her life that would follow her to the grave. ---A Fate Worse Than Death: Indian Captivities in the West, 1830-1885 (P. 459)
By Gregory Michno, Susan Michno

Anna had already been dead for five years when Emily Harrison started circulating her story of what "really" happened to Anna while in captivity, and the narrative of her being married to a chief and treated kindly started there.