For cryin’ out loud. It was a movie about the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Not a political statement, imho. I heard it wasn’t even a good movie.
At the risk of being hammered...the article references a very different time in history. Everything was violent. Do I think torture was a good thing? Absolutely not. But the Indians fought amongst themselves for territorial rights in the same manner. Why would they not fight against what I’m sure they regarded as invaders taking their land.
The article references the Parkers. There is a good fictional book about Cynthia Parker’s captivity. Ride The Wind. One of my favorites.
“But the Indians fought amongst themselves for territorial rights in the same manner.”
Not as often as you would think. This continent was thinly populated with not much pressure on resources such as hunting grounds. Tribes went to war for the sake of going to war. Warriors-braves wanted war so they could return home successfully with more prestige within the tribal hierarchy and return with captured females
From the article, the movie changed him to Comanche, and made it political and racial.
“”‘All the men were killed, and any men who were captured alive were tortured; the captive women were gang raped. Babies were invariably killed.’
Not that you would know this from the new Lone Ranger movie, starring Johnny Depp as the Indian Tonto.
For reasons best know to themselves, the film-makers have changed Tonto’s tribe to Comanche — in the original TV version, he was a member of the comparatively peace-loving Potowatomi tribe.
And yet he and his fellow native Americans are presented in the film as saintly victims of a Old West where it is the white settlers — the men who built America — who represent nothing but exploitation, brutality, environmental destruction and genocide.””
Even many of the American army generals like Custer, Sheridan, and other said that it was sad they were destroying the Indian way of life and that they couldn't fault the Indians for fighting back. Nevertheless, modern historians have tried to paint a false image of the noble Indian who didn't exist in reality. The Indians were like all the earth's peoples...some good some bad. Some tribes were peaceful and some were bloodthirsty, cruel, and warlike.